LTT on Mastodon

[LogicalDrm]

From the little read on this thread and on Mastodon FAQ (which is among the worst places to try to understand how the thing works), it would only be nod to hardcore fans without much of gain. As you only see stuff you follow (and assuming things shared by those you follow), you would need to know about LMG or follow someone who knows about LMG to ever get it shown to you. Which, to media company that looks platforms in terms of growing, is not ideal. Potential new followers are very limited. Would it be additional to Twitter and Facebook? Sure, but it would still be just a nod to existing fans mainly. Unless the platform itself offers something extra, and I don't think lack of moderation or personal bubbles are that interesting features in this context.

 

I don't use Twitter, but on Facebook, apart from ads, I don't get anything in the feed that doesn't directly relate to what my followed sites, groups or friends do. Which is what Mastodon also does, right? So not seeing any difference or benefits there.

[bp_]

On 11/24/2022 at 7:28 PM, wanderingfool2 said:

An issue that I see with Mastodon is that they allow for instances to read the DM's of people using it (and in cases people have been kicked for criticizing within a DM a server).

That's something Luke fixated on yesterday on the WAN show and I thought it was an uncharacteristically bad take. This is true of every online service out there, except WhatsApp* and Signal. If you send me a DM on these very forums, Linus can read it. It's not only technically possible, LMG expressly reserves this right:

Quote

Personal messages are visible to the participants of the conversation. They may also be accessed by a Staff Member if they have a reason to do so, such as if the post is reported by one of the participants.

Put simply, if your users are planning a terrorism or sharing illegal pictures, be it via Twitter or Mastodon or web 1.0 forums, as the platform owner you probably want to find out before you get swatted.

 

*) Reportedly WhatsApp runs on-device machine learning that determines if your message shouldn't be automatically reported; whether they're reported by the algorithm or by other people, reported messages get sent in clear text to Meta, and then Zuck can read those DMs, too. Not sure how Signal handles this.

Edited November 27, 2022 by bp_
clarifying whatsapp DM privacy isn't absolute either

[bp_]

Oh, also: I agree with LogicalDrm that just having LMG sign up for a single Mastodon account is pointless.

 

If LMG wanted to do Mastodon the plan would be completely different: run an LMG-owned Mastodon instance with closed signups; only LMG employees can post. That lets you know that @linus@mastodon.linustechtips.com (or @luke@mastodon.linustechtips.com or whatever) are the real deal and not impersonators.

 

[CirnoFumo]

2 hours ago, bp_ said:

Personal messages are visible to the participants of the conversation. They may also be accessed by a Staff Member if they have a reason to do so, such as if the post is reported by one of the participants.

This is something that I want to @LinusTechand Luke, why it's strange that a social media like Mastodon to read DM's, while your forums, twitter, facebook and other ones do it too?

 

2 hours ago, bp_ said:

That's something Luke fixated on yesterday on the WAN show and I thought it was an uncharacteristically bad take.

My 2 cents is because they don't want to say that they don't want to join mastodon because isn't profitable to them for doing it so, or they don't understand how it works.

 

2 hours ago, bp_ said:

f LMG wanted to do Mastodon the plan would be completely different: run an LMG-owned Mastodon instance with closed signups; only LMG employees can post. That lets you know that @linus@mastodon.linustechtips.com (or @luke@mastodon.linustechtips.com or whatever) are the real deal and not impersonators.

A lot of people are doing that, another thing that LMG could do is a verified tech youtubers instance, so Linus, Luke, Anthony, Wendell, MBKHD and more for example would use it and people would know that's an official tech-tubers instance

[wanderingfool2]

4 hours ago, CirnoFumo said:

This is something that I want to @LinusTechand Luke, why it's strange that a social media like Mastodon to read DM's, while your forums, twitter, facebook and other ones do it too?

There is a difference between a company that has access to the DM, vs something like Mastodon which if you join a server they will have ways to read the DM's.  The general concept being that you now essentially outsource moderation on a per server basis that isn't controlled by one entity.

 

An example being the people who get booted out for talking about capitalism in a DM.  There is a drastic difference when moderation is allowed to be done with no oversight from the controlling body.

[bp_]

1 hour ago, wanderingfool2 said:

There is a drastic difference when moderation is allowed to be done with no oversight from the controlling body.

…what controlling body?

[ToboRobot]

Mastadon won't replace Twitter because normal people need something that is as simple and easy to use as Twitter, and Mastadon is not that.

Social media isn't good for many people and if we realize that and don't just replace Twitter with something else because ElonBad.jpg

People need real life community and doing and experiencing things in real life, not just scrolling through timelines.

[wanderingfool2]

8 hours ago, bp_ said:

…what controlling body?

That is my point.

 

To put it to Discord as a better example.

 

If I created a new Discord server, I don't get access to DM's.  I only get access to administer the specific server itself.  Thus discord DM's exist with a single moderation team doing it.

 

In Mastodon the instance owner has access to read the DM's.  Thus each server has different people who can access DM's.  No overarching controlling body that sets "consistent" rules of what is or isn't allowed.  You also have the chance of having every DM now fully logged by someone you don't necessarily know.

[kumicota]

52 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

In Mastodon the instance owner has access to read the DM's

This applies to everything that doesn't use E2EE, this forum administrators has access to your DM's, twitter staff has access to your DM's and both says cleary that they are able to do it.

 

I find surprisingly that everyone accepts that the government reading your SMS's, twiitter, meta and more reading your DM's to be OK and that if you need a secure way to talk, you should use something like signal but not on things like Mastodon and they see it as the most evil thing that exists.

 

edit:

 

Discord admins for example, can also read your DM's, mastodon server owners being able to read yours is the same thing, they are the controlling body of the server, owning an mastodon server isn't the same thing as owning a discord server.

Edited November 28, 2022 by kumicota
addendum

[bp_]

1 hour ago, wanderingfool2 said:

That is my point.

 

To put it to Discord as a better example.

 

If I created a new Discord server, I don't get access to DM's.  I only get access to administer the specific server itself.  Thus discord DM's exist with a single moderation team doing it.

 

In Mastodon the instance owner has access to read the DM's.  Thus each server has different people who can access DM's.  No overarching controlling body that sets "consistent" rules of what is or isn't allowed.  You also have the chance of having every DM now fully logged by someone you don't necessarily know.

If you create an account on whatsapp, whatsapp can give itself access to your DMs.

If you create an account on twitter, twitter has access to your DMs.

If you create an account on discord, discord has access to your DMs.

If you create an account on linustechtips.com, linustechtips.com has access to your DMs.

If you create an account on mastodon.social, mastodon.social has access to your DMs.

 

The only difference here is that ActivityPub lets you communicate across independent servers, so if @foo@potato.social sends a Mastodon DM to @bar@tomato.online, then by necessity both potato.social and tomato.online have access to that DM.

[wanderingfool2]

5 hours ago, bp_ said:

The only difference here is that ActivityPub lets you communicate across independent servers, so if @foo@potato.social sends a Mastodon DM to @bar@tomato.online, then by necessity both potato.social and tomato.online have access to that DM.

The is a massive difference that many will not expect, and it's something that is not made abundantly clear either when joining Mastodon.

[Isuck Assimov]

I recall everyone making fun of twitter like 10-12 years ago bc nobody thought it would take off and other options like facebook were just much more popular.

Mastodon could take off at some point and become one of the main 3 social media platforms in the west, but it's hard to forsee how it's going to develop.

No doubt in my mind that Twitter will be gone from the mainstream around this time next year.

[Guest]

cross-posting to the mastodon network can even be automated by either using a selfhosted version of something like moa (https://gitlab.com/fedstoa/moa ) or by using online services (which I certainly wouldn't trust with API tokens for a corporate twitter account). So all it would take for LMG is maybe half a day of work to create an account on a mastodon instance of their choice (like mastodon.social which is the main one) and set up Moa (like in a docker container on a RPI). Might be worth to reconsider @LinusTech

 

And as for revenue. I don't see why they wouldn't benefit from it when the news about new videos, merch and whatever creates a revenue stream would be spread on an additional platform with little to no extra costs (apart from the initial setup of the system, and yes, periodic maintenance as with any other self-hosted software). They don't have to be active in any other way on this network unless at one point decide to give it more love.

 

A self-hosted mastodon instance for their own community would ofc be nice, but also bring a big chunk of additional costs to run and moderate this thing. Yes, they could make it invite-only and only have staff on there which fans could follow from other instances of the federated network, but it would still mean higher maintenance costs, as in contrast to a self-hosted cross poster, the domain/IP for it will be publicly exposed and will be subject to attacks, So I understand why this certainly is not an option, at least not at the current, still pretty early, state of the fediverse.

[darwin006]

The reason I like Twitter is that it is a centralized place where I could see "micro blogs" from a bunch of people/writers/content creators I am interested in. I dont believe Discord or community forums are good substitute for what Twitter and Mastodon do. Having to switch from Discord server to Discord server to see what each content creator I am interested in is up to would be a terrible experience. And people that arent content creators likely wont start Discord servers.

 

Does Mastodon have problems, yes, but so does Twitter.

 

I dont believe Twitter will die any time soon but I find it hard to believe that the experience on Twitter will ever get any better and feel like the experience on Mastodon will only get better.

 

I think we should also keep in mind that right now developers at Twitter are working on ways to extract money out of the platforms users and the volunteer Mastodon developers are working on improving the user experience.

[darwin006]

These seem like good reasons LTT should be cross posting on Mastodon.

 

https://sparktoro.com/blog/why-marketers-creators-and-brands-should-start-using-mastodon-asap/

[Shimejii]

You are just trying way to damn hard to get LTT to be on a pretty much dead platform. Do you work for Mastadon? Cause it genuinely seems that you work there and you want someone with a following to make people go there. Its not worth their time or paying someone to be on a platform like that, people just arent going to be on there for a while if at all. It offers nothing over its competition besides being trendy and a in the moment thing.

 

 

[darwin006]

3 minutes ago, Shimejii said:

You are just trying way to damn hard to get LTT to be on a pretty much dead platform. Do you work for Mastadon? Cause it genuinely seems that you work there and you want someone with a following to make people go there. Its not worth their time or paying someone to be on a platform like that, people just arent going to be on there for a while if at all. It offers nothing over its competition besides being trendy and a in the moment thing.

 

 

No one works for Mastodon. Mastodon is not a company.

[LogicalDrm]

13 hours ago, darwin006 said:

These seem like good reasons LTT should be cross posting on Mastodon.

 

https://sparktoro.com/blog/why-marketers-creators-and-brands-should-start-using-mastodon-asap/

If only that article was written to attract business people and not some random influencers and wannabes who want to get their thing going. Half of the points are just saying same thing over and over again. Two of them are basic marketing knowledge any bigger company already knows. The numbers given are interesting, but might not be flattering. Looking at curves certainly aren't. And the writers own boast of 1000x engagement doesn't really hold. If that alone is looked critically, most logical explanation of such numbers is that they aren't really known outside of their niche audience, of whom all happen to be already on Mastodon.

 

13 hours ago, darwin006 said:

No one works for Mastodon. Mastodon is not a company.

Sorry, but Mastodon GmbH disagrees with you https://joinmastodon.org/about

Non-profit company/organization is still company who has paid employees. I also work for non-profit company. The meaning of that word is that they aren't in business to make money. If they do, its all invested back to growing the company. No payouts to employees or investors.

[LogicalDrm]

On 12/18/2022 at 9:20 PM, helloimalex said:

As it's decentralised, there isn't any one person that would try and "grab attention" so this doesn't make much sense.

 

Mastodon is in the news a lot because people don't trust Twitter (Elon) and trust the idea of a decentralised, open platform more.

They are still company who requires users and contributions to keep things running. Its even said in the article linked just before. So, grabbing attention here means advertising itself (through users) as alternative.

 

You may disagree and claim that words most commonly used when talking about more straight business' won't apply. And you'd be wrong in there.

[Error 52]

On 11/9/2022 at 11:40 PM, Kisai said:

The problem with Mastodon is that it's silo'd.

 

Silo'd social networks are basically a similar concept to discord servers. There is always someone in control of the server, moderating it. It operates at a smaller scale than twitter. However, because it's silo'd, that means you're basically in a preaching-to-the-choir setup which works fine if you're in a peer group, eg "tech journalists" but not "tech fans"

It's like Discord servers except if you had to register your account on one specific Discord server, and that server could read your DMs, block you from viewing other servers, and if the server deleted itself then your account went with it.

 

It's...not great.

[Takumidesh]

On 12/20/2022 at 1:14 PM, Error 52 said:

It's like Discord servers except if you had to register your account on one specific Discord server, and that server could read your DMs, block you from viewing other servers, and if the server deleted itself then your account went with it.

 

It's...not great.

and it doesn't even do the cool stuff discord does. Matrix also exists, which is federated like mastodon, except the use-case actually makes sense, since it is meant for smaller private chats (and supports E2E encryption)