• Lvxferre@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I think that ActivityPub’s path to success is to integrate multiple forms of media into a single, messy but interoperable platform. It’s like Twitter, Reddit, YouTube and Blogspot in a single place, without needing to sacrifice your preferences. The success is not on specific actors like Lemmy, Kbin, Mastodon… or Threats Threads.

    The article mentions Eugen’s post on Threads joining. I think Eugen underestimates the threats.

    A shrinking network is considerably worse than a stagnant one; infrastructure costs take into account the former large size, people start relying on donations and tools that won’t be there any more, so goes on. And even the fact that users are leaving prompts other users to disengage, specially if they need to choose “should I spend my time interacting with people in Mastodon/Lemmy/Kbin, or in Threads?”. So no, when Threads abandons ActivityPub down the line, Mastodon won’t be exactly where it is now, it’ll be in a far worse position.

    For a simple analogy: Pre-Threads Fediverse will be like a 100k inhabitants city. Post-Threads Fediverse will be like a 1M city decimated back into 100k inhabitants.

    I also think that Eugen puts too much weight on brand recognition. Specially as Mastodon is not as widely known as it should.

    • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I also think that Eugen puts too much weight on brand recognition. Specially as Mastodon is not as widely known as it should.

      Not sure this tracks. Mastodon, on the fediverse, is stupidly dominant. Like, numerically, the fediverse is mastodon with some other stuff. Even in absolute terms, mastodon’s numbers alone qualify it as a social media platform in its own right, though a small one.

      Part of this is mastodon’s brand recognition. Eugen has been subtly but surely astute with his business decisions, I’d say, walking the line between being a non-profit FOSS project and a normal business (on the mastodon webpage, and now in media, Eugen identifies himself as the CEO).

      And now, European governments are using his software to establish their presence on the web, where you should recall Eugen is European (German).

      Compared to Meta/Threads, sure Mastodon’s brand recognition can’t compete. But I wouldn’t underestimate the brand recognition he’s got. Lots of people now know the name “mastodon”.

      • Lvxferre@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        By “as it should”, I mean “as society in general should recognise it”. Context here is important - Mastodon is dominant in comparison with other parts of the Fediverse, but still tiny in comparison with Threads, Twitter and the likes. It’s a medium fish surrounded by tiny fish, saying “okay, that shark over there may join our pond”.

  • cloaker@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    When I see great content here I can always boost via my Mastodon account. Its a great system.

    • MusketeerX@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      How are you doing that?

      Do you mean just manually copying a link, switching into the Mastodon app and pasting it in, or is there a better method?

      • cloaker@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I use KBin. I can boost via my KBin account, and then boost via my Mastodon account. Alternatively I search the user on Mastodon, find their comment and boost it.

        • EnglishMobster@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          From your Mastodon account, just search @technology@lemmy.ml. You’ll see the whole community as if it was one user. You can also interact with comments, reply, or upvote.

          Note that Lemmy kind of does a bad job of integrating with Mastodon. Each community is an account that “boosts” (retweets) every post and comment in it, making it very noisy. I talked to the devs about it a while back and better integration is just not something they’re interested in.

          Kbin (which is a Reddit clone like Lemmy) works much much better. If you search @Disneyland@kbin.social from Mastodon, you’ll see the Disneyland magazine appears to be an actual user and the threads/comment sections work like you’d expect them to on Mastodon. Any posts appear to come from that Mastodon account (instead of being “boosts”).

          Kbin allows you to follow Mastodon users as well, which Lemmy doesn’t support and has no plans to support. You can flip between “Reddit mode” (“Threads”) and “Twitter mode” (“Microblog”) at the top of the page on Kbin, effectively merging 2 services into 1.

          Kbin’s roadmap also has it integrating more ActivityPub stuff natively over time. It’s the reason why I use it over Lemmy.

        • cloaker@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          I use KBin. I can boost via my KBin account, and then boost via my Mastodon account. Alternatively I search the user on Mastodon, find their comment and boost it.

      • Kichae@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        From Mastodon, you can treat Lemmy communities as if they’re users (the ActivityPub term, I believe, is “agents”). That means you can follow them, and things posted to the community will get pushed out to you just as if they’re Mastodon posts.

      • mesamune@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You can also subscribe to communities on lemmy to mastodon, subscribe to peertube channels, and via versa. It’s pretty cool!