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Comment by andrewmcwatters | Hacker News Reader

Why is Mastodon so uncool? Is it the name? Is it the lack of cool people on Mastodon? Was it because of things like "toots?"

I love open source software as much as the next HN reader, but there's something so unappealing about not just Mastodon, but Matrix, and all the other social software out there today.

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>something so unappealing...

I thought Twitter was unappealing and pointless when it started. I guess I'm still not sure why it actually hit mainstream.

It hit the mainstream because news outlets started reporting "Celebrity-so-and-so said such-and-such on Twitter", and the constant barrage of this free advertising eventually resulted in brand name penetration.

Meanwhile, celebrities used Twitter because they read on the news of other celebrities using it.

And so the cycle continues.

Ah, that's true. I also remember for a brief bit 24 hours news channels trying to fill time would report on a story and then watch the tweets & comment on user's reactions. It was very weird, but on reflection that seems about the time it exploded in popularity, and large events would urge you to tweet a specific hashtag to try to get on the front trending page.

Yep. Just like Tiktok. One day it wad mentioned in an article as something kids use, next day it's being mentioned by every journalist, next day it's mainstream.

Go to joinmastadon.com > click “Get Started” > see a bunch of text about choosing communities and running servers

People want to see “username”, “email”, “password”, “create account”

This, they should make a cool software with a cool name, like "Pleroma".

Many of the people interested in independent communities and federation are not interested in the format of Twitter, which leaves Mastodon (and the other major Mastodon-likes) to soak up the types who want an exclusive hugbox that they can totally control and block wrongthink in.

They come after the incumbent and feel like a copycat. They also solve problems most people don't know they have, and thus are unattractive (at large scale).

This is probably a large part of it. Derivative products are decidedly not cool.

When it comes to Matrix, my problem with it is that it's just too damn big and complex compared to the actual problem I want it to solve and no doubt comes with a huge attack surface. In contrast, something like IRC or SMTP is so much simpler and we have multiple battle-tested implementations.

> Is it the lack of cool people on Mastodon?

Yes. Related, what "makes people cool".

Speak for yourself. Both Mastodon and Matrix have thriving communities.

for me it s because they are copycats not original ideas. they are trying to copy twitter, but twitter as-is can't be decentralized, if it could it would already have.

then, they are not content agnostic. my email , even gmail, won't deny delivery of messages because of its politics. Mastodon and matrix people seem to be going down the same dark path of blocking each other. that is not just unfortunate, it is a red flag to stay away

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