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Why Mozilla is betting on a decentralized social networking future (techcrunch.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.ml
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The mission-driven tech company behind the Firefox browser, Pocket reader and other apps is now investing its energy into the so-called “fediverse” — a collection of decentralized social networking applications, like Mastodon, that communicate with one another over the ActivityPub protocol.

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[–] 76 points 2 years ago (11 children)

I have never understood why so many people find the structure of Twitter/Mastodon more appealing than that of Reddit/Lemmy.

I like it when I read other people's thoughts on a matter, then react to them by adding relevant thoughts of my own and hoping people will react to mine too. Like on a traditional discussion forum (or for even older people, newsgroup or mailing list). That is what Reddit/Lemmy does reasonably well, although not quite as well as those traditional discussion forums.

On Twitter/Mastodon I have to have original thoughts of my own to be able to post anything at all, and even if I do have some, no one will read them if they aren't already following me.

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  • [–] 43 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I agree with your preference for forum/community style.

    But I think the purpose of microblogging is to follow a personality, rather than a topic or community. And users that share there do so to cultivate a following, which would be harder on Reddit/Lemmy (only ones that I can think of who do that successfully are onlyfans users).

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  • [–] 22 points 2 years ago

    Yes, I guess so. I have no interest in becoming any kind of celebrity. That sounds stressful and can make you a target for harassment.

    I prefer it when I can post my thoughts anonymously without anyone knowing or caring who I am. If a thought is good, it doesn't matter whose thought it is.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    Yeah, Mastodon is much larger than Lemmy yet it feels like shouting into the void. I like it as a means to keep up on news by following journalists who've fled twitter but I've yet to get any real interaction on my posts. Meanwhile on Lemmy I'm never running out of things to read and people to discuss posts with.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Microblogs like Mastodon are excellent for following specific people, and for getting an overview of the current zeitgeist. Forums like Lemmy are excellent for following specific topics. Both are useful in different ways.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Why would I follow a specific person for non-video content? That strikes me as way too parasocial to me. All that person is going to tell me is their personal opinion, and I barely trust the news articles that appear here, much less some famous person's random opinion.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    I don't get it, either. I use a plugin to expand horizontal space on Lemmy, because I already hate how much real estate it wastes. Mastodon is much much worse, with this aesthetic that forces you to use a mobile "long-ways" view of the content.

    I'm convinced that Mastodon is more popular only because Elon has pissed off Twitter users more than Spez has pissed off Reddit users.

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