I think the reaction to Threads federating was another nail in the coffin. Threads lost its spot as the leading alternative for very good, self-inflicted reasons, but if anybody who does Twitter for a living needed proof that Masto couldn’t be trusted was that they saw the notion of a large participant with a critical mass of users, tons of resources and at least some version of a recommendation engine as an affront.
Everybody panicked about “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” and it turns out Meta didn’t need to expand or extend anything, the temper tantrum from even the suggestion that they would use AP (whose goals were supposed to be universal interoperability in the first place) was enough to crack Masto in half and throw the entirety of it into a massive spiral of open-source style arrogant, holier-than-thou ragefest. Threads became THE subject matter of Masto for the foreseeable, after Elon and Twitter were THE subject mattter for a long time. It was positiviely stalkerish behaviour and a significant reason I left the moment Bluesky gave up the PR-ish “we’re cool because we’re invite only” crap.
As for the working on that part, I’ll believe it when I see it. In the time they’ve been “working on it” Twitter died, Bluesky was made, ran under the radar for a while, then blew up and every other alternative died.
It’s too late now, anyway. It’s the husk of Twitter and Bluesky now. If Mastodon ever had a shot at mainstream prominence that window is now firmly closed and never coming back.
The Lemmysphere never had a shot at mainstream prominence and Reddit was never in trouble the way Twitter is, much as people around here are often in denial about that. It is more sustainable as a small thing, though. It’s effectively just a mid-size forum and as long as your interest overlap with the communities that do exist it’s fine being small. Probably would be nicer being a few times bigger, but hey, that may still happen over time.
Mastodon needed to be a proper social network and that is never going to happen now, new features or not.
I think the reaction to Threads federating was another nail in the coffin. Threads lost its spot as the leading alternative for very good, self-inflicted reasons, but if anybody who does Twitter for a living needed proof that Masto couldn’t be trusted was that they saw the notion of a large participant with a critical mass of users, tons of resources and at least some version of a recommendation engine as an affront.
Everybody panicked about “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” and it turns out Meta didn’t need to expand or extend anything, the temper tantrum from even the suggestion that they would use AP (whose goals were supposed to be universal interoperability in the first place) was enough to crack Masto in half and throw the entirety of it into a massive spiral of open-source style arrogant, holier-than-thou ragefest. Threads became THE subject matter of Masto for the foreseeable, after Elon and Twitter were THE subject mattter for a long time. It was positiviely stalkerish behaviour and a significant reason I left the moment Bluesky gave up the PR-ish “we’re cool because we’re invite only” crap.
As for the working on that part, I’ll believe it when I see it. In the time they’ve been “working on it” Twitter died, Bluesky was made, ran under the radar for a while, then blew up and every other alternative died.
It’s too late now, anyway. It’s the husk of Twitter and Bluesky now. If Mastodon ever had a shot at mainstream prominence that window is now firmly closed and never coming back.
The Lemmysphere never had a shot at mainstream prominence and Reddit was never in trouble the way Twitter is, much as people around here are often in denial about that. It is more sustainable as a small thing, though. It’s effectively just a mid-size forum and as long as your interest overlap with the communities that do exist it’s fine being small. Probably would be nicer being a few times bigger, but hey, that may still happen over time.
Mastodon needed to be a proper social network and that is never going to happen now, new features or not.