Conversation

Notices

1. Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@calckey.social)'s status on Saturday, 13-May-2023 16:49:09 JST Chris Trottier

   The event that made me leave mastodon.social was the decision by Mastodon gGmbh to make that the default server for new registrations.
   
   Rather than shrug and ask, “What can we do?”—and do nothing—I realized that this is the Fediverse. I’ve got options.
   
   I don’t have to be part of any server that gives me the “No!” feeling.
   
   Despite being a member of mastodon.social for 5 years, and donating money to the project, I think it’s going in the wrong direction.
   
   “But Chris, what about growth?” Some have said.
   
   If growth comes at the expense of decentralization, I don’t want growth.
   
   “But Chris, people don’t care about decentralization!”
   
   Then we’ll make them care. If they don’t care now, they’ll care tomorrow.
   
   And we’ll do this by making decentralized social media that’s so good, you’ll never go back to Big Social.
   
   We can’t compromise on this aspect. I don’t care what certain folks say, you can’t achieve decentralization through centralization.
   
   Some people call this idealism.
   
   If so, this idealist took the practical step up leaving mastodon.social.

   • Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@calckey.social)'s status on Saturday, 13-May-2023 16:49:07 JST Chris Trottier

     in reply to

     My own stance: no one will migrate from mastodon.social unless:
     
     1. Migration has minimal friction
     2. The other server has tangible benefits over their current one
     
     What I mean to say is that it’s time to make it easy and compelling to leave mastodon.social.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 13-May-2023 16:49:07 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     @atomicpoet Yep. Must be one click and fully automated if we expect everyday folks who use technology as an everyday thing to use it. And that’s a whole clone of your account – your social graph, posts, everything.

   • Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@calckey.social)'s status on Saturday, 13-May-2023 16:49:08 JST Chris Trottier

     in reply to

     Let me be clear, I have no bone to pick with individual Mastodon servers. We are on the same team.
     
     But let me suggest this: without post importing, it will be very hard to convince mastodon.social users to migrate away from that server.

     Aral Balkan repeated this.
   • Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@calckey.social)'s status on Saturday, 13-May-2023 16:49:09 JST Chris Trottier

     in reply to

     There’s only two things that will cause Mastodon to do a U-turn on defaulting to mastodon.social:
     
     1. Social pressure
     2. Competitive pressure
     
     Mastodon has no social pressure to do a U-turn. In fact, they’re being applauded for it. The Press and certain tech influencers are telling them that they made a “brave” step.
     
     So now it’s time for Mastodon gGmbh to feel competitive pressure.
     
     They’re not the only game in town, and the Fediverse has options.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 13-May-2023 17:34:52 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Torb 🦋

     @torb @atomicpoet The default could round-robin with zero loss of usability. The reason it doesn’t is a business decision taken by the CEO of Mastodon (which I still can’t believe has now seemingly been adopted – non-ironically – as a title).

   • Torb 🦋 (torb@octodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 13-May-2023 17:34:53 JST Torb 🦋

     in reply to

     • Aral Balkan

     @atomicpoet @aral Agree with this and I’m someone who applaud mastodon.social defaulting (and other apps defaulting to other servers for that matter). Usability matters.

     But it really needs to be way easier (and less lossy) to move instances too.

     We need both!

     1. Easy to join fediverse in the first place (defaults help here)
     2. Easy to change instances in fediverse