<story><title>Mastodon hit 10M users</title><url>https://mastodon.social/@mastodonusercount/110051957865629817</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brabel</author><text>&amp;gt; Toxic and hateful people simply get banned&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know if that&amp;#x27;s supposed to sound like a good thing, but to me this sounds like a distopian place where anyone that does not align with the &amp;quot;correct worldview&amp;quot; is made to disappear and never be heard of again.&lt;p&gt;If you think &amp;quot;only bad people are toxic&amp;quot;, you probably haven&amp;#x27;t been to many debates where your viewpoint happens to be the minority viewpoint.</text></item><item><author>devjab</author><text>&amp;gt; So long as you lean to progressive worldviews and see insult slinging at those that don&amp;#x27;t see your way not as being toxic, but rather just expressions of righteous indignation.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not sure which mastodon server you are on, or which ones you&amp;#x27;re linked with, but I&amp;#x27;m on Universeodon and I&amp;#x27;ve frankly seen nothing of the sort.&lt;p&gt;You do have a point of course, but I haven&amp;#x27;t seen any sort of toxic behaviour. Toxic and hateful people simply get banned, and the servers that house them get blacklisted. Which isn&amp;#x27;t too dissimilar to how the world used to function before centralized social media made it harder to moderate which people you want to spend your time on.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m progressive of course, so it&amp;#x27;s easy for me. But the thing is, if you came up to me in the real world and started to talk about how wrong it is for people to be gay, then I&amp;#x27;d frankly walk away from you. This is what becomes possible with decentralized social media, but I&amp;#x27;m not sure I&amp;#x27;d call it a bubble or safespace, it&amp;#x27;s simply going back to the world before Facebook and Twitter, to when it was much easier to ignore people.</text></item><item><author>sbuttgereit</author><text>&amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;Zero toxicity and probably several magnitudes more meaningful conversations with people from all around the world. This apparently comes from the kinds of people I could find and connect with.&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;So long as you lean to progressive worldviews and see insult slinging at those that don&amp;#x27;t see your way not as being toxic, but rather just expressions of righteous indignation... sure, I could buy that line.  A quick perusal on the front page of mastodon.social had only of either relatively neutral topics or various progressive tropes on the news of the day.  No contrary views were there at all.  Perhaps this is what you mean: it&amp;#x27;s your bubble, so it&amp;#x27;s cozy and non-toxic.  A safe-space of sorts for all right minded people.&lt;p&gt;I do agree with you: Twitter is a digital hellscape.  Of course, I deleted my account half a decade or so ago for this reason and to be fair, it&amp;#x27;s not changed.  It might now have a different flavor with Musk, but still as toxic a place as it was before him.  I can&amp;#x27;t see Mastodon as being much different and with that I&amp;#x27;ll do us both a favor a stay away from there as well.</text></item><item><author>nforgerit</author><text>After about 6 months hosting my own little private Mastodon instance, I can say the following things:&lt;p&gt;(1) Whoever cares about that but the atmosphere is nice, cozy, exciting and creative. Zero toxicity and probably several magnitudes more meaningful conversations with people from all around the world. This apparently comes from the kinds of people I could find and connect with.&lt;p&gt;(2) Hosting is relatively easy. I think all kinds of organizations (e.g. sports clubs, media companies, private companies, schools, political parties, gov&amp;#x27;t agencies, etc.) should give it a shot hosting their own instances to take control of their social media identity. 
They don&amp;#x27;t necessarily need to open registrations for everyone and start moderating &amp;quot;the masses&amp;quot;. I only let few hand-picked people on my instance that I happen to know IRL and still have a happy life.&lt;p&gt;(3) I once saw a post from a German IT mag (heise, I think from November 2022) that claimed that they have more traffic through Mastodon than through any other Social Media thingy. Surely, their audience was a good fit but I think it&amp;#x27;s a matter of critical mass when more less-nerdy people would join the Fediverse.&lt;p&gt;In summary, I deleted my Twitter account ~2 months ago and don&amp;#x27;t regret it. Some things are a bit annoying (mostly bugs, finding and connecting with other people, not much interaction with my posts [maybe it&amp;#x27;s because my posts are sh*t]) but all in all it&amp;#x27;s a great resource for inspiration and digital interaction with other people.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>xorcist</author><text>&amp;gt; distopian place where anyone that does not align with the &amp;quot;correct worldview&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;People said exactly the same thing about open relays and spam filters some twenty years ago. A very famous Internet personality kept an open relay around for many years until there was literally no one left to federate with. I worked at a place who thought themselves obligated to keep around copies of all incoming messages for some period of time.&lt;p&gt;Who are you to decide between signal and noise, and so on, the discussion went. Turns out that&amp;#x27;s useless discourse. Because similar logic goes the other way around, who are you to decide what I keep?&lt;p&gt;I am not obliged to read email from all senders, and above all, I do not have to explain myself and I don&amp;#x27;t have to keep them stored as to not infringe their right of expression.&lt;p&gt;Every decentralized protocol with any real world traction allows every actor to filter traffic in a permissionless manner. You can call it righteousness or as amoral as you&amp;#x27;d like, but until you can present an alternative system that&amp;#x27;s how it&amp;#x27;s going to work.</text></comment>
<story><title>Mastodon hit 10M users</title><url>https://mastodon.social/@mastodonusercount/110051957865629817</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brabel</author><text>&amp;gt; Toxic and hateful people simply get banned&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know if that&amp;#x27;s supposed to sound like a good thing, but to me this sounds like a distopian place where anyone that does not align with the &amp;quot;correct worldview&amp;quot; is made to disappear and never be heard of again.&lt;p&gt;If you think &amp;quot;only bad people are toxic&amp;quot;, you probably haven&amp;#x27;t been to many debates where your viewpoint happens to be the minority viewpoint.</text></item><item><author>devjab</author><text>&amp;gt; So long as you lean to progressive worldviews and see insult slinging at those that don&amp;#x27;t see your way not as being toxic, but rather just expressions of righteous indignation.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not sure which mastodon server you are on, or which ones you&amp;#x27;re linked with, but I&amp;#x27;m on Universeodon and I&amp;#x27;ve frankly seen nothing of the sort.&lt;p&gt;You do have a point of course, but I haven&amp;#x27;t seen any sort of toxic behaviour. Toxic and hateful people simply get banned, and the servers that house them get blacklisted. Which isn&amp;#x27;t too dissimilar to how the world used to function before centralized social media made it harder to moderate which people you want to spend your time on.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m progressive of course, so it&amp;#x27;s easy for me. But the thing is, if you came up to me in the real world and started to talk about how wrong it is for people to be gay, then I&amp;#x27;d frankly walk away from you. This is what becomes possible with decentralized social media, but I&amp;#x27;m not sure I&amp;#x27;d call it a bubble or safespace, it&amp;#x27;s simply going back to the world before Facebook and Twitter, to when it was much easier to ignore people.</text></item><item><author>sbuttgereit</author><text>&amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;Zero toxicity and probably several magnitudes more meaningful conversations with people from all around the world. This apparently comes from the kinds of people I could find and connect with.&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;So long as you lean to progressive worldviews and see insult slinging at those that don&amp;#x27;t see your way not as being toxic, but rather just expressions of righteous indignation... sure, I could buy that line.  A quick perusal on the front page of mastodon.social had only of either relatively neutral topics or various progressive tropes on the news of the day.  No contrary views were there at all.  Perhaps this is what you mean: it&amp;#x27;s your bubble, so it&amp;#x27;s cozy and non-toxic.  A safe-space of sorts for all right minded people.&lt;p&gt;I do agree with you: Twitter is a digital hellscape.  Of course, I deleted my account half a decade or so ago for this reason and to be fair, it&amp;#x27;s not changed.  It might now have a different flavor with Musk, but still as toxic a place as it was before him.  I can&amp;#x27;t see Mastodon as being much different and with that I&amp;#x27;ll do us both a favor a stay away from there as well.</text></item><item><author>nforgerit</author><text>After about 6 months hosting my own little private Mastodon instance, I can say the following things:&lt;p&gt;(1) Whoever cares about that but the atmosphere is nice, cozy, exciting and creative. Zero toxicity and probably several magnitudes more meaningful conversations with people from all around the world. This apparently comes from the kinds of people I could find and connect with.&lt;p&gt;(2) Hosting is relatively easy. I think all kinds of organizations (e.g. sports clubs, media companies, private companies, schools, political parties, gov&amp;#x27;t agencies, etc.) should give it a shot hosting their own instances to take control of their social media identity. 
They don&amp;#x27;t necessarily need to open registrations for everyone and start moderating &amp;quot;the masses&amp;quot;. I only let few hand-picked people on my instance that I happen to know IRL and still have a happy life.&lt;p&gt;(3) I once saw a post from a German IT mag (heise, I think from November 2022) that claimed that they have more traffic through Mastodon than through any other Social Media thingy. Surely, their audience was a good fit but I think it&amp;#x27;s a matter of critical mass when more less-nerdy people would join the Fediverse.&lt;p&gt;In summary, I deleted my Twitter account ~2 months ago and don&amp;#x27;t regret it. Some things are a bit annoying (mostly bugs, finding and connecting with other people, not much interaction with my posts [maybe it&amp;#x27;s because my posts are sh*t]) but all in all it&amp;#x27;s a great resource for inspiration and digital interaction with other people.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>graypegg</author><text>This is an odd minority viewpoint for HN actually. I find most people feel rather empowered by the decentralized nature of mastodon… or email for that matter.&lt;p&gt;Your right to freedom of speech is between you and the government. People aren’t required to publish your work just because you complain.&lt;p&gt;The difference here is you can just hook into the same decentralized system the publisher is using, and subvert them by finding another instance to use or even making your own! With no difference in reach or power.&lt;p&gt;Why is that bad? The seems to be MUCH better for you.</text></comment>