> Otherwise, you're just trading one Twitter for another, which is foolish, because it means you wrongly believe that history doesn't repeat itself.
I don't see how you can come to this conclusion. Twitter is not a protocol, is a corporation with a profit-motive, and sees itself as the town square of the internet with its design geared toward this function.
Mastodon is about as far from trading in for another Twitter alternative as you can come and that's largely what makes its design so difficult to grasp for Twitter emigrants.
Are there other protocols that fix some of ActivityPub's design flaws? Yes, like nostr and Bluesky's AT Protocol. But ActivityPub, being an open protocol, can also be massaged into a better one by its community.
Personally, I've found my corner of Mastodon to be a much kinder place than Twitter perhaps because it does not profess to be the town square of the internet nor pursues that status.
Ultimately, I think what we're seeing here is the transparent lie sold to us by Meta and Twitter and Instagram: that social media superapps that try to tie the world together are not forces of good to unite but ultimately weapons that serve to divide it. We are not equipped as a species for the cacophonous screams of billions, only the Bodhisattva of compassion Kuan-Yin, She Who Hears the Cries of the of World, can do this, and she arguably doesn't exist.
So yes, you are at the mercy of whatever server mods you happen to drift to on Mastodon but you are not powerless, like on Twitter.
> Mastodon is about as far from trading in for another Twitter alternative as you can come and that's largely what makes its design so difficult to grasp for Twitter emigrants.
A protocol has no inherent value. Its value comes from its application. And, Mastodon, as one of ActivityPub's applications, is nothing better than Twitter fractured into many smaller islands of Twitter: instead of upsetting Elon and getting the boot, if you upset the Mastodon server operator you happen to choose, you run the same exact risk of being deported off that particular island. If you're going to subject yourself to the whims of a dictator, you might as well stay on Twitter and reap the benefits of the larger network.
You've ignored all of my salient points. Of course Mastodon offers significant advantages for all of the reasons I just described. Of course a protocol has inherent value. Its value is inhered by giving users the option to walk away whenever they want or implement their own server.
You've completely ignored the arrest of user behavior and audience that happens when a single proprietary application is allowed to own the social sphere of the public.
The whims of a dictator become a lot less impactful when users can just walk away. The consequences are massively different when the entire captive audience is on one platform and feels they must remain because there is no other option with critical mass. With federation, critical mass is spread out over the protocol, yes a value inhered in the protocol itself.
I don't see how you can come to this conclusion. Twitter is not a protocol, is a corporation with a profit-motive, and sees itself as the town square of the internet with its design geared toward this function.
Mastodon is about as far from trading in for another Twitter alternative as you can come and that's largely what makes its design so difficult to grasp for Twitter emigrants.
Are there other protocols that fix some of ActivityPub's design flaws? Yes, like nostr and Bluesky's AT Protocol. But ActivityPub, being an open protocol, can also be massaged into a better one by its community.
Personally, I've found my corner of Mastodon to be a much kinder place than Twitter perhaps because it does not profess to be the town square of the internet nor pursues that status.
Ultimately, I think what we're seeing here is the transparent lie sold to us by Meta and Twitter and Instagram: that social media superapps that try to tie the world together are not forces of good to unite but ultimately weapons that serve to divide it. We are not equipped as a species for the cacophonous screams of billions, only the Bodhisattva of compassion Kuan-Yin, She Who Hears the Cries of the of World, can do this, and she arguably doesn't exist.
So yes, you are at the mercy of whatever server mods you happen to drift to on Mastodon but you are not powerless, like on Twitter.