I don’t like the clickbait title at all – Mastodon’s clearly going to survive, at least for the forseeable future, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it outlives Xitter.
Still, Mastodon is struggling; most of the people who checkd it out in the November 2022 surge (or the smaller June 2023 surge) didn’t stick around, and numbers have been steadily declining for the last year. The author makes some good points, and some of the comments are excellent.
I think a better title & question would be, “Why is Mastodon struggling to thrive?”
It’s surviving no problem, but it’s not thriving for a multitude of reasons. Some are pretty well covered across comments here & in the linked discussion, and are more or less reiterations of prior discussions on the matter.
Ultimately I think as much as many of those reasons are correct, the biggest reason is the same as ever: network effects. All the jank and technical details could be endured and adjusted to if there was sufficient value to be had in doing so, i.e. following accounts of interest/entertainment, connecting with friends, etc. That’s proven to varying degrees by those that have stuck with Mastodon. In turn, however, it’s also clear by how many bounce off that for many there’s still insufficient value to be found across Mastodon instances to justify dealing with all the rough edges.
If Mastodon had enough broadly appealing/interesting people/accounts across its instances, people might deal with the various technical and cultural rough spots the same way they deal with similar on other social networks they may complain about yet won’t leave. There still aren’t enough of those sorts on there for many though, so Mastodon simply survives but doesn’t thrive.
I have an account that I use to read, but I’ve never posted on Mastodon. Decided to tweet after seeing this post and I see a privacy option called “Quiet Public - Fewer Algorithmic Fanfares”.
Seriously, wtf is this? What does that even mean? If techie people like me can’t figure out Mastodon then you can’t expect the general public to do that. I’m not blaming this feature in particular, but Mastodon is quirky in all the wrong ways.
Mastodon is just like Threads : a hype , wait for the hype to end and you’ll see that it doesn’t offer something that would impress an ordinary person who isn’t a nerd or tech savvy enough to continue using it… What I’ll say now is more like random thoughts about federation and it applies to any federated service but this post inspired my thoughts so …
The two best features I can think of for a Mastodon are :
- Open source: an excellent thing but it’s probably not important for an ordinary person who still uses the products of big companies just because they are “convenient” and “common” even when his data is the cost
- federated: although it provides freedom to choose where you want to join, it creates a lot of confusion and inconvenience as well : I personally have somewhat specific interests and I usually tend to avoid public instances dedicated to “everything”, however, every time I decided to join a federated service I got the same confusion : “which instance should I choose?” , I had two accounts on Mastodon before I deleted one of them ( and I’ll probably delete the other soon ) and I felt this confusion the two times I created an account, I have two accounts on Lemmy and I felt this confusion the two times I created an account, one account on Peertube and it’s the same ( this was the most difficult of them honestly because Peertube’s filters are very bad and whenever I could find an instance that I considered good, it turns out that registration is closed, or needs approval), the same confusion also happened when I created an account on Kbin/Mbin , the same on Pixelfeed , the same when I searched for an instance of friendica and it will be the same when I think in the future to repeat the experience on any other federated service… Now, someone may come and say the famous sentence “it doesn’t matter which instance you choose, at the end you can follow anything from any instance” and honestly this sentence is a pure myth imho because … first : when you register an account in an instance, you will constantly notice the “local” section, which shows you what’s happening on the instance you are in , and it’ll form part of your experience in the instance depending on the instance itself and people on this instance , also , let’s suppose that a large number of annoying users existed on a popular instance and the moderation of this instance couldn’t solve the problem ( or didn’t do anything about this in the first place) , what might happen is that moderation of other instances might decide to defederate with this instance, and this might affect an ordinary user who has done nothing but joined the instance - and any other person who isn’t annoying but but ended up on this instance -, I know that this point is unreal currently but it might be real one day especially that some instances are known for not being tolerated with specific behaviors
- Another confusion that might happen … I’ll explain it with my own experience : when I was still using my first Mastodon account, I left the account for a few months and then decided to return … but guess what happened ? I forgot which instance I signed up for in the first place ! fortunately, after two attempts in two different instances, I found the solution : I searched on a random instance for my Account (I still remember the username ) and was able to find it … I was lucky in this, but I can’t guarantee that everyone will be as lucky as me and will find a way to remember ( this is both a good and bad point for the federation , on the one hand I forgot where I registered because the instances are similar , and on the other hand I found the instance which I registered in using another instance )
TL;DR
Federation is not something familiar or comfortable for an average normal person
Because no one is on it. I don’t do twitter/facebook-like social media to interact exclusively with random people. I have no family or friends on Mastodon and couldn’t tell you if any “content creators,” for the lack of a better term, that I follow elsewhere are on it to follow.
I don’t see the point. It’s like twitter. Never saw the point of that either instead of lemmy or Reddit honestly
I stopped distro hopping and started hopping around Mastodon instances instead.
I currently have two active accounts. One is more established but the server goes down for days at a time.
The other is pretty robust but I’m still establishing myself there.
I echo the sentiment that there aren’t a lot of Asian people on Mastodon. Although it seems that vivaldi.net is mostly Japanese people.
Personally, I just don’t enjoy that Twitter-like format. I never used Twitter so I find it… Awkward? To me its kinda like a platformer with bad controls, everything else about the game might be great but if it doesnt feel satisfying to play, I’ll skip.
I still have my account and Megalodon on my phone but I just can’t get into it.
I’m with you on the Twitter style format. Reddit / Lemmy is nice because you can have actual conversations. Twitter you are basically shouting into the void and sometimes it shouts back.
That format was pretty good for “Come see us live at the Sodbury Theatre in Glurpfortshire, Feb 32nd @9PM!”
I remember an instance where a Cracked.com article pointed out something like “5 creepy places on the internet” one of which was a dicussion forum in which one account was posting over and over, many times a day, about public appearances and such of the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and readers showed up en masse to harass this person. Turns out she was off-label using a forum engine as her own little microtwitter to publish alerts to a fan club. But when the Cracked author rejected that context and substituted his own, it smelled a lot like Humanbeing151.
But yes in general I find discussion boards to be more useful; I think it’s why they were invented first; Reddit and Lemmy are basically just different approaches to implementing Usenet.
It’s not dead but it has one big and massive issue that prevents mass adoption - discovery. If I can’t just write the name of my friends in search and find them no matter where they made their account - for an ordinary user, or one that comes from centralized services, this seems extremely alien and hostile.
And in the end, if you can’t find your friends, you want to interact with, what is the point of using the service?
Luckily, Mastodon is working on a discorvery protocol that should offer a way to find people across the board, which will hopefully make the Fediverse “appear” centralized to the average Joe while maintaining all the benefits of decentralization to the advanced users.
Problem: even with discovery, if your friends are on Threads or X, you still won’t find them on Mastodon. But its a step in the right direction.
You would be able to find them if every instance didn’t decide to defederate with Threads.
I guess it’s for people like me, who have no friends?
William Shatner couldn’t find me on Mastodon
I personally didn’t like mastodon’s UI style, I found it tedious to use and more complicated then needed.
There’s no real similar product(at least out of what I’ve used) so nothing to run muscle memory on, and it deep dived into federation to the point it was confusing too confusing to figure out
Agreed! It’s centralized around hubs instead of being truly distributed. Why isn’t an “instance” a set of users with an identical config file based on the agreed upon moderation/federation? Why do I have to join a single server that can go down repeatedly? It is giving up yhe advantages of cloud/distributed services.
@thenexusofprivacy So, I’ve just kinda got a stream of random tidbits here that’ll hopefully sorta surmise my thoughts.
The good:
First off, it’s shrunk but it’s by no means dead. Things grow and shrink and grow again, if it was a straight line with no variation I’d assume it was fake.
Also, Mastodon is not all of activity pub. Threads has brought a lot if people onto the protocol, and while it’s still in development it seems to be intended to work interoperably and the devs said they plan to let people migrate out and take their following/followers with them. I expect this to really supercharge the ecosystem.
The indifferent:
This isn’t 2020 anymore, and there’s more protocols out there. Nostr, in my opinion, is leagues better in the decentralization and user options/customizations department. AT (Bluesky) is leagues better in the end user was of use department. Both of those protocols are also much, much, lighter to host.
Activity pub also has it’s advantages of course. Being the oldest and also being great for communities are two quite big ones.
Some people have chosen to either leave Activity Pub for those protocols, or joined the decentralized ecosystem directly into one of the other two. It’s indifferent, though, because it’s a decentralized ecosystem. All three can chat with each other, so Mastodon & Activity Pub may have shrunk - but the amount of people you can communicate with on them has risen exponentially thanks to bridges.
The ugly:
Federation is a mess. You can have a dozen friends on Activity Pub, a dozen on other protocols connected via bridges or threads and find you can only talk to two or three. That’s a problem; most would give up before understanding why, and many more would likely figure out why and the decide it’s not worth their time working around. After the Bluesky wave I’ve heard Mastodon be called some variation of “bickering fiefs” a couple dozen times.
There’s also some toxicity within the space. Most people I’ve interacted with have been great, but it still rears it’s head now and then. You can get nearly bullied off the platform if you suggest people be nice to Windows users. It was kinda funny to see that blog post shortly after I jokingly said “you guys would probably put a hit out on me if I said I was using Windows” in a similar thread. In a similar vein, while accessibility is great, I’d bet more people have left the protocol after being yelled at for not using alt text then there are users who rely on alt text.
My predictions:
I’d bet that all three protocols grow a lot in the future and that more platforms start integrating one or more of the three big protocols. It’s a cheat code for new platforms to automatically have a bunch of content, and it’s free platform software already built. Federation issues and fediverse specific toxicity issues will potentially be eternal septembered away. Most people won’t care what OS you use and will want to be able to talk to their friends as apposed to having current federation. There might be a small splinter group of the older crowd using opt-in federation, but most of the ecosystem will change if it grows.
I’d also bet the three big protocols will continue to get closer. All three can already communicate, and heck, I, as an incompitant programmer, made a quick script that lets any Nostr client communicate with Mastodon &/or Bluesky. Throw some compitant devs at it and soon enough you probably won’t even be able to tell at first glance what protocol the other person you’re communicating with is on. Bluesky and Nostr in the mix bring Mastodon’s ~800k monthly active users to like ~15 million. A more connected ecosystem make things better for everyone.
Good points! Agreed very much about all protocols growing, and that the ActivityPub fediverse is broader than just Mastodon.
Re blue sky, is anyone actually federating with it? I don’t know of any other instances besides the official one.
Yes but no. Due to architectural differences, federation under AuthTransfer protocol is simply different compared to ActivityPub. In its own terms it is federated as individuals’ data is stored in personal data servers (PDSs) connected to a relay, which currently is only the Bluesky relay, that roughly speaking connects them to other personal data servers.
You can technically operate your own personal data server apart from those operated by Bluesky, but I think it’s fair to say the vast majority on there don’t. It’s not clear yet, apart from fully holding your own data, how useful it is to operate your own given you only have one relay to use anyway at the moment.
So even in its own terms Bluesky really isn’t federated in much of a meaningful sense yet. The problems are twofold: a major part of their pitch is making federation Just Work™, keeping the underlying tech out of mind to mitigate confusion, but you can’t have your cake and eat it too here. Eventually, if you’re really committed to meaningful federation, you have to teach people about the value of operating their own personal data servers, at minimum, otherwise what was the point in separating it out in the architecture?
Problem is, that goes against their pitch to their audience and spoils the appeal. It’s telling a good joke only to kill it by explaining to the one person that went, “I don’t get it.”
Secondly, they’ve already upfront said that relays may be cost prohibitive for many people to operate, resulting in only a few ever being spun up. If that remains the case and is true, then even if a few were spun up, that’s not any more federated or distributed than the rather consolidated web we see now. How much of a difference would it make if the social web was running on AuthTransfer and the major relays were owned and run by Meta/Facebook, Twitter/X, and Google?
Congrats you have your own data in a personal data server…But are you really the one running it, or did you just opt into the PDS entryway offered by Facebook/Twitter/Google/etc. because sorry, what’s that about a server?
Yeah, right now the way I think of it is that Bluesky is (conceptualy) a single big instance, connected to the rest of the ActivityPub fediverse via Bridgy Fed (which speaks both AT and ActivityPub). Bluesky’s decentralized in a different way, and the broader ATmosphere (apps that use AT protocol) is growing as well, but it deosn’t really have the same concept of instance.
I agree with top comment.
I’m Indonesian. Most of trending fediverse are Western related topics which It’s not relevant to me.
There’s one time when I randomly post about my country politics, and people on Mastodon just assume or comment using Western mindset.
Other than this Lemmy account, I mostly stick with hobby-related fediverse that mostly East Asian and Southeast Asian people.
Also, Indonesian is currently the highest user on Twitter, recently bypassed Brazil. People still use it as our local feed is… well localized. No Western-related discussion and much more comfy.
That was a great comment. It’s frustrating because the fediverse should be good at making it easy for people to find topics their interested in … but it doesn’t work out that way in practice.
I made a Mastodon account during that blitz in '22. Yes, content wasn’t there yet, but honestly, it was the interface for me. It’s UI didn’t feel simplistic enough to me as someone just getting started with it.
Lemmy may have faced a similar fate for me if it weren’t for the smooth interface of Sync to be honest. I know many on here are leaps and bounds beyond my tech proficiency, but so many folks are still in the stone ages writing their passwords on post-it notes etc so to think that they’d adopt something like Mastodon over Twitter or Lemmy over Reddit seems like the bigger counterparts will always win just on sign-up flow and instant gratification.
Yeah, Mastodon’s interface has a lot of complexities. It drives me crazy when people say “just like email” … here’s the most recent diagram of what posts are visible in your federated timeline.
I have a Mastodon account and now on my fourth, fifth instance. I instance hop a lot, which helped me find my people.
I dont agree with a huge chunk of what was said in the post. But I understand where the white people in Bali reference comes from. I am an Asian woman in tech and took me awhile to find people that I can actually connect with. What I like about Mastodon is the fact that I can find niche topics that I wont see in other social media. Also, want to flag that I no longer have accounts in proprietary social media since 2017 which probably helped my drive to find an online community.
In saying so, I have faced some crazy level of stalking (one person only so I guess its isolated?) to the point that this person messaged me on Linkedin and emailed me to tell me I was being impersonated on Mastodon. Because he didnt believe that I am myself??? He went on saying, Hi Miss, I saw youre being impersonated blah blah.
But I also want to mention that I have met so many amazing people through Mastodon.
Its a weird space, but I am weird so I guess I belong there. Loo
There definitely are some great people there. Finding the right instance makes a big difference… unfortunately, almost eerybody starts off on mastodon.social, which for most people isn’t a great choice, and don’t realize they can move – and when they do try to move, they lose their posting history which is annoying.
I kinda want to give it another try. There was once a blogpost posted here (i think) about basically “how to have fun on mastodon”, something like that, but i can not find it anymore. Anybody remember this and got a link?
Can’t recall what the title was, but I do remember reading a guide of sorts that essentially boiled down to “start following tags first, you can filter people later”.
Mastodon is pretty different to its competitors. It looks similar to Twitter / Bluesky, but the way the social network functions is completely different.
It’s designed to be anti-infuencer… One of the things I hate about most social media platforms is a few people get all the attention. There are a few reasons for this, but it’s not really based on merit.
I think a lot of people joined Mastodon wanting a Twitter clone. It’s obviously not and Bluesky is, so people moved there. The approach Mastodon takes is far from perfect, and may not work out in the long run. But it seems like it’s worth at least trying something different.
