this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2024
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As many users seek alternatives to X, rival social network Mastodon says that its official app downloads are up 47% on iOS.

Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko says downloads on Android are also up 17%, while total monthly sign-ups rose approximately 27% to 90,000.

The open-source X rival functions much like its competitor, the site formerly known as Twitter, on the outside. However, unlike the centralized Twitter, Mastodon consists of thousands of different social networks, which are integrated into a web it calls the "fediverse."

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

Does anyone know good people to follow? I'd rather not join Bluesky.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 hours ago

I learned to follow hashtags, not people on mastodon myself..

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 hours ago (3 children)

I joined bluesky because the weather group I followed on Twitter moved there, so deleted twitter and follow them on BLuesky now. Is there a reason not to join bluesky?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

I would say no* but the asterisk has a few paragraphs involving funding sustainability, cryptobro involvement, and dubious decentralization.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

The biggest reason is that it's centralized.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 hours ago

No, just a personal choice.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

iOS friends, check out the Mastodon client Ice Cubes.

It's free (beer and speech) and it's very good IMO.

Also, after you settle on a server, consider setting up a recurring donation to your admin to help with server costs. The way I see it, it's that or ads and enshitification.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 12 hours ago

Ice Cubes is a fantastic Mastodon client!

[–] [email protected] 81 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Fantastic! I'm reducing my dependency on for profit entities every day, and federation is a great means to that end. Let's welcome those moving over during the exodus!

[–] [email protected] 19 points 19 hours ago (5 children)

Make sure to actually understand how those "non-profit" websites and services are functioning.

It costs money to power servers and to maintain them. Most of the fediverse instances like to claim they are run on donations and so forth. But... think about how angry people get at the idea of tipping for ANYTHING and then wonder how many of those are throwing significant cash at your favorite lemmy or mastodon instance per month.

Everyone is always shocked when they find out how social media or a "free" vpn or whatever is funded and where there information is going. But hey, I am sure it will be completely different this time.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

hink about how angry people get at the idea of tipping for ANYTHING and then wonder how many of those are throwing significant cash at your favorite lemmy or mastodon instance per month.

a) it's not significant amounts, it's quite cheap, per user, to run lemmy, e.g. lemm.ee is one of the bigger instances and costs 200 Euro a month, b) tipping 20% on a bill that doesn't even include any service is not the same as donating to a service you like. This is more like a patreon which doesn't lock anything for non-donating users.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

it's quite cheap, per user, to run lemmy, e.g. lemm.ee is one of the bigger instances and costs 200 Euro a month,

storage requirements will only increase (attachments, linked website images), unless you are regularly deleting content and so contributing to link rot

[–] [email protected] 2 points 12 hours ago

lemm.ee currently even proxies links to external images, sunaurus identified some issues with it, storage wasn't one of them. Storage requirements are going to look quite differently if you're lemmynsfw.com but it's not particularly hard to get enough donations to afford a couple extra TB a month. Much, much cheaper than paying admins an actual wage where I think the actual scaling pain will be.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 17 hours ago

The guy who runs the instance I’m on sends out a statement every month, detailing how much he’s received in donations, what everything has cost, and how much there is leftover. Accounting for a small buffer to allow for emergencies, he donates the excess to Alzheimer’s research. We’re a Pritchett focus instance, so everyone’s happy with that.

I’ve paid far more to my Masto admin than I ever did to Twitter.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 18 hours ago

You can be against the US's tipping culture while at the same time being someone who donates to things lol

But yeah, definitely. For a lot of these things the funding has to be coming from somewhere and there's no way donations are enough.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 16 hours ago

Make sure to actually understand how those “non-profit” websites and services are functioning.

Generally speaking if you aren't the customer then you are the product. Individual Lemmy and Mastadon instances are getting around this for now because they are small enough that their operational costs can be covered by the ideologically motivated instance admins and users. If Lemmy or Mastadon ever gains wide popularity this will change.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 18 hours ago

But hey, I am sure it will be completely different this time.

Exactly.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 14 hours ago

Now this is the shill op i can get behind.

Fuck bluesky, it is corpo trash

[–] [email protected] 12 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

That's good news. Odds are that some of those people will go back to closed media platforms after ~2 months; but the ones who stay help Mastodon and the Fediverse to grow.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

Good to hear at least some upside for Mastadon from the recent rise in Bluesky users.

Hopefully this trend will continue and and Mastodon can retain at least a solid percentage of those why try it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

Considering that every post about Mastodon has supporters who get the spelling wrong, it might be a little much to expect the general public to figure it out. Bluesky is pretty much the VHS to Mastodon's Betamax.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

Well played, sir!