Technology

I'm almost certain there's a first to market FOMO kinda thing happening with influencers/scammers/advertisers. Everyone with that disgusting "grindset" mentality on Instagram just got a blank slate on an entirely new platform with a lot of media attention.

I care about following cool people and browsing porn, and I don't think Instagram is gonna let the latter fly.

I know I'm practically begging for downvotes here, but it is also possible that some people are perfectly aware of the tradeoffs, pros, and cons of social media, and have decided that the positives outweigh the negatives. That you have different priorities doesn't necessarily mean that everyone else is stupid or ignorant.

yeah my insta was not set up for threads when i opened the app. i had to purposefully consent to linking the two accounts. Seems to me like its 10 mil actual users.

Wasn’t there a statement recently that meta wasn’t doing threads in some regions? Specifically the EU?

Maybe, but I think it has more to do with the wall-to-wall mainstream news coverage of the launch of Threads in recent days, compared to the relative handful of isolated mentions Mastodon has had in the last 12 months.

If people didn't care about ethics or privacy, that doesn't mean they won't switch to Mastodon, it merely doesn't mean they will go. Those people will just go where the crowds go.

Just because of the sheer power of marketing, really. I dabbled with Mastodon, but it wasn't any harder to use than Twitter. Maybe some people just disengage entirely when they hear about instances when in practice for a casual user it makes very little difference.

It's the advantage of advertising money and monopoly abuse. Nobody advertises linux, when's the last time you saw a linux commercial? You don't. You'll never be inundated with linux or fediverse advertisements, so nobody gets to find out you exist. You'll notice how in the media free software is never mentioned, ever, unless it's something scary with the tired old picture of a dude in masked street garb looking to steal your families identity and make them destitute.

At some point, honestly, it's just inertia. My sister is smart enough to figure out Mastodon, she calls instances confusing because she just doesn't WANT to move. She's still on Facebook, saying she's just not into Twitter or Reddit like stuff, but she'll be on Threads I bet.

I don't think we need to be the biggest thing in the world, though, as long as we have ENOUGH people in the Fediverse to be active.

This is exactly my feeling as well. I like the design of it, but it doesn't feel like it's own thing. It feels like alternative content from the people I already follow on Instagram. It's like an echo chamber in an echo chamber.

I'll be curious to see if they ever decide to open it up to non-Insta users. I turn to Microblogging like Mastodon/Twitter for a completely different social media experience, not a different side of the same coin.

But in your metaphor there is an important part missing. Twitter, the pie shop around the corner, just lost a chunk of customers to the bakery. Now I’m not saying this will kill twitter, I think Elon manages just fine on his own. But it’s going to contribute to its death, as it gives people an easy alternative.