this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2025

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Mastodon’s founder cedes control, refuses to become next Musk or Zuckerberg (arstechnica.com)

submitted 1 day ago by some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org to c/technology@lemmy.world

211 comments fedilink hide all child comments

His grand vision remains to leave Mastodon users in control of the social network, making their own decisions about what content is allowed or what appears in their timelines.

I don't use Mastadon cause I don't care for micro-blogging, but nevertheless, I like this.

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[–] DocumentingReality@lemmy.cafe 8 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I heard of Mastodon a couple of years ago. I was still on Twitter and Facebook. I am not really tech savvy, so I didn't bother to go over to Mastodon. It was until just recent, I thought I would give it a try.

Long story short, I am on Mastodon, and I decided to ditch both Twitter and Facebook. Because, I like the layout and the format much better than the two. I even joined Friendica (open source platform like Facebook). So, as I started getting used to these open source social media platforms. They are much better and I would support Mastodon with some donations from time to time.

I mean, why pay $8 to Elon Musk, when you can do pretty much the same things on Mastodon? I wasn't going to throw in my 8 bucks just to get a stupid tweetdeck. Mastodon has its own deck, and it's totally free!

I am still investigating other various social media (open source) sites. I may even join Pixelfeed (alternative to Instagram).

I know you have to make money....but for a guy like Elon Musk, who owns Tesla, Space X, and a few others...why does he really need to charge people money to use his platform? I mean, I know he can do whatever he wants...but he has the money to keep the site going...without charging people 8 bucks to get "Premium" service.

The only thing Mastodon doesn't have that X (Formerly Twitter) has, is the fact that you can watch (or upload) live streaming.

Maybe, in the future Mastodon will do that?

[–] MoondropLight@thelemmy.club 3 points 5 hours ago

I think it's unlikely that Mastodon (or other federated short form blogging platforms e.g. Pelorama) will integrate live-streaming as it's pretty far outside of the normal content they are built for. There is a project that does support live streaming and is federated though: Peertube https://joinpeertube.org/

[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 11 points 10 hours ago

I'm amazed, he actually stopped corruption before it started

[–] crossdl@leminal.space 30 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I'm not sure what the practicals of doing something like this will be, but it speaks a lot to who Eugen Rochko is.

He might also be an obtuse dick. I've gotten that vibe too. Still, good for him.

[–] PriorityMotif@lemmy.world 2 points 56 minutes ago

Good people are allowed to get annoyed when there's a ton of people complaining about non issues. From what I've heard Mastodon users are somewhat insufferable.

[–] Snapz@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

Can anyone savvy to the nuance here please let me know how this is any different from Altman and ChatGPT?

As o followed along lightly, my read was that they used non-profit foundation structure to win public trust and calm initial opposition to them creating an unethical product that will ultimately destroy us all and then they fired all the people focused on ethics and codified the non-profit status.

Is this meaningfully different, or likely a similar tactic?

[–] italics2@lemmy.world 1 points 35 minutes ago

I am no professional but:

https://sfstandard.com/2023/11/21/openai-governance-structure-explainer/

This is what I have found about the governmance structure of OpenAI. It's complicated but basically the working company is a for-profit controlled by a non-profit, controlled by employees and other investors, the non-profit is also controlled by a board of driectors. Also it's all based in the US.

The Mastodon model is probably going to be a lot simpler and will probably not allow big investors to take ownership of the company. Also they are looking for a suitable country in the EU that will enforce the non-profit's obligations to the people. Being based in the EU is in itself a huge difference, and by choice. They have not set anything in stone yet so it's all specualtion essentialy.

Also there is the trust thing: OpenAI does not need trust from people, other AI companies are for profit too and work just fine. Mastodon is build around the fact that it is different from things like twitter. If they start doing maliciuos stuff, they will loose trust and in turn their main selling point. Also openness.

Also it is open source is it not? So any progress they have made can be used to create a competitor. Basically the whole business model is different.

[–] MoondropLight@thelemmy.club 2 points 5 hours ago

I haven't seen their governance structure yet, but I don't think it will ever be like Altman and OpenAI. Eugen just doesn't have that cult of personality around him, and there's not that much money in a free and open-source platform that doesn't lock people in.

[–] ToucheGoodSir@lemy.lol 63 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Even having ceded control, they will go down in history as a legend. More positively viewed then the likes of... other social media founders.

[–] turmacar@lemmy.world 47 points 18 hours ago (4 children)

Will anyone be better than Tom?

Became everyone's friend, became a millionaire, retired, (so far?) avoided falling off the right wing conspiracy cliff. Kind of just a quiet dude.

[–] mayhair@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

Tom Anderson?

[–] Snapz@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago

Weird man, had no idea that rupert murdock bought MySpace?

[–] turmacar@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago

Ja der Typ.

[–] ToucheGoodSir@lemy.lol 7 points 12 hours ago

Lmaooo. I forgot about Tom. Which shows how good of a tech founder he was. Memorable, but not in the headlines every other day.

[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 9 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Goals, for sure. The guy just does whatever he wants at this point. I think he's doing photography now?

[–] Test_Tickles@lemmy.world 5 points 11 hours ago

I read this as pornography, and was like I can believe that, this is the type of thing super rich bastards do. But then I googled it and realized that I got it wrong.

[–] amon@lemmy.world 8 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

The foil of Notch?

[–] chaogomu@lemmy.world 6 points 14 hours ago

Notch was primed for that shit long before Minecraft took off. He posted early builds to 4chan, and was an active shitposter there.

The money just made him stop paying attention to anything else.

[–] ysjet@lemmy.world -1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

uh... ok? So now it'll be controlled by someone who DOES want to be the next Musk or Zuckerberg?

[–] Kuma@lemmy.world 8 points 6 hours ago

No it is the opposite, this is the first paragraph in the article:

Mastodon announced Monday that it's shifting its structure over the next six months to become wholly owned by a European nonprofit organization—"affirming the intent that Mastodon should not be owned or controlled by a single individual."

[–] sighofannoyance@lemmy.world 107 points 1 day ago (47 children)

Why is there this very loud chorus of people touting bluesky as alternative to twitter instead of the far superior Mastodon?

Bluesky you are basically swapping a tyrant against a benevolent dictator, that dictator can become corrupted or sell bluesky to Musk Elon later on.... That is not a solution that is more like procrastination.

[–] Snapz@lemmy.world 5 points 7 hours ago

Bluesky has jack dorsey, Twitter founder, in its DNA. Dorsey cheered musk on and they call each other friends. Bluesky is not the win people want it to be, it's just a bandaid for your conscience with the same infected wound under the surface.

[–] NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml 11 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

Someone (probably bluesky) almost definitely spent a large sum of money on marketing/astroturfing for Bluesky

[–] RightEdofer@lemmy.ca 66 points 1 day ago (26 children)

Because BlueSky has designers and Mastodon is a nightmare for new users. Same reason a lot of “superior” open source apps never take off. Devs are rarely also good designers. Until we start caring about normal people it will stay that way.

[–] xapr@lemmy.sdf.org 11 points 17 hours ago (9 children)

Nightmare is massively overstating it. Mastodon's UI/UX is neither a nightmare nor difficult to use. People who say this stuff leave me scratching my head.

In my view, the only legitimate criticism of Mastodon is about the lack of an algorithm that's constantly bubbling content to the top, but that's a valid design choice that many people prefer over the toxic algos over at X/Twitter.

[–] crossdl@leminal.space 8 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

"Why can't the algo find me better content?"

Motherfucker, it's social media. You have to get social with people. Make a fucking friend, right?

Like, I fixed that shit by following George Takei and Mark Hamill and some reporters. The algo shouldn't be finding things for you. You should be finding people.

Yeah, scratching my head just the same. My only problem with Mastodon is the same I had with StumbleUpon. It's way too good about putting neat people and conversations in front of me and I feel bad not rising to the occasion more when I just want to deadbrain.

[–] xapr@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 16 hours ago

Following hashtags is also a great way to find content you're interested in.

[–] RightEdofer@lemmy.ca 6 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (4 children)

Apparently not nearly as many people as those who prefer Bluesky’s approach.

Most new users want to easily see feeds related to the things they’re into and that’s objectively more difficult with Mastodon unless you already have a list of accounts to follow. I want Mastodon to succeed and grow but it won’t if it only caters to tech heads.