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maegul (he/they) @lemmy.ml

If you’ve heard that people have problems with the head of mastodon (gargron) this recent little incident might be an example.

The link is to a GitHub discussion, where gargron shuts down a discussion because he’s made a unilateral decision and then locks the thread to avoid debate.

On its own, it might not seem like much. Someone’s gotta make the decisions, right!? Except that this is a pretty dramatic shift for mastodon (leaning into search more) and the main ask was to provide two options rather than roll multiple things into one, which is pretty reasonable. Plus, why not get user feedback? Mastodon has plenty of users after all? Add to this that the main masto instance intends to federate with meta’s threads and gargron has signed an NDA, and the tin foil hat starts to come out.

Alone, not much of a big deal, but it’s an insight into why people find masto devs difficult (AFAIU).

EDIT: woah ... downvotes straight off of the bat ... which is fine ... but honestly, I'm not sure why the downvoting ... this was just an example of something some might find problematic ... feel free to discuss.

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21 comments

  • The real problem is: People use mastodon and are not willing to use other fediverse-software...

    But there are so many of them out:

    • #friendica
    • #firefish
    • #misskey
    • #calckey
    • #pleroma
    • #akoma

    and a plethiora more of them... you can have all the features here, which are you missing on mastodon... but people love to complain about missing features than trying another software... #mastodonisnotthefediverse

    • First ... I totally agree.

      Second, firefish and calckey are the same thing (calckey rebranded to firefish).

      Third ... it's not just about software. I think that's superficial reasoning. There's a lot of patience, organisation and earned trust required before there's an instance with admins choosing to run a particular platform with a good number of users on there. The success of mastodon ought not, IMO, be (entirely) attributed to dumb luck.

      There's been a lot of persistent and committed work from gargron and mastodon, and the truth that many "platform diversity" types (including myself) run into is it's not the user's fault ... who's going to maintain, run, promote and support a platform and its early instances with commitments to decent performance, scalability and maintenance into the future? Calckey/firefish, for example, have actually kinda struggled recently, despite really trying and having an attractive platform, because they haven't been able to provide a stable and performant instance with even minor growth in users, nor a UI that works well on mobile. It's an uphill battle, and I don't think you can blame users for wanting some degree of trustworthiness from a platform before they jump in, however much of a chicken-egg problem it is.

      • mastodon wasn't stable or performant in the beginning either. It attracted users because there weren't other well known alternatives and those users were excited to build a new place where they felt comfortable. Gargron rode that excitement and enthusiasm until it didn't serve him anymore, then he shut those ppl out

      • i don't agree.

    • Problem is, like 80% of people are on Mastodon, and many features (quote posts being the most obvious one) require the people you're posting to to have the same interaction with the post.

      Using the quote post one for an example: If Mastodon never implements quote posts, what's the point? Most people will only see you posting links and it ruins the whole interaction you're looking for, so using another piece of software isn't going to help.

      In regards to people disagreeing with decisions that Mastodon makes (such as full text search like this), it's a bit more complicated. Depending on the feature as well, it's possible for the things you don't like about a feature to still affect you, even if your instance doesn't have it implemented. A LOT of people complained about universeodon.com having full text search, and there was nothing they could do about it (other than just blocking universeodon.com).

      I'm personally of the opinion that Mastodon should use its success and mindshare to be a little more like what people expect to get people on decentralised services (within reason - we still want good privacy controls and anti-abuse tools), and then other platforms (or instances!) can then take it further when it comes to things like no search, no quotes, etc. for insular and private communities that people want.

      • Mastodon should use its success and mindshare

        I keep coming back to this about mastodon. I don’t think it’s a good fediverse citizen especially given how big it is. It’s culture seems very self centred and selfishly ambitious.

        • Problem: Who is Mastodon for, and what is the goal of Mastodon?

          From my perspective, the issue is that Eugen made something, a certain community and culture ended up forming (not Eugen's goal, but it is what it is), and now that a different community and culture is starting to take notice, the old community and culture wants to preserve what it always was.

          However, I think Eugen wants Mastodon to be for everyone, and Mastodon doesn't exist in a vacuum, so sometimes you do have to override the opinions of those who are already there. You're hearing the voices of those already there directly, but you're not hearing the voices of the people who aren't there. (and in my opinion, they should be on Mastodon / Fediverse, we're all aware of why centralised social media is bad)

          There's a lot of opinions and views on Mastodon, and while "the users" are important, if Eugen wants Mastodon to have reach, sometimes he has to do different things. An example write-up of why Eugen could be making the decisions he is currently can be seen in this blog post: https://erinkissane.com/mastodon-is-easy-and-fun-except-when-it-isnt

          And lastly, my final point: Whatever Mastodon itself becomes, users and administrators are still in control, so does this really matter? With the code being open source, with the ability to federate and defederate freely, ability to turn off features easily with toggles and options, Mastodon is not being compromised. The question comes down to what the default experience should be, and the Fediverse gives people control to still keep the community and culture they want, just somewhere else.

          • On a broad level you’re making sense, though respecting those that built your platform from nothing and paid your bills for years probably means more here than in a generic product management context.

            Beyond that though, the issue here is in the details and context, specifically the unexplained unwillingness to question a pretty superficial mental model. There’s plenty of sense fora variety of reasons in having advanced options. But he wasn’t interested in even talking about it. Not terrific user engagement, whether for current users or those yet to come.

    • Misskey all the way! MFM is way more fun than plain markdown

      • It certainly is! Given that’s it’s just in the front end it cocos be easily incorporated into lemmy. Not sure the devs would be down though because of performance issues.

21 comments