Comment by AnthonyMouse | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AnthonyMouse | Hacker News Reader

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Mastodon still has like four users compared to any of the major social networks. Fix it now even if it takes a breaking change before it hurts more later, or do better with whatever thing actually does eventually rival the user count of Facebook or email.

> The protocol, devised in the 1970s, can't be changed now, and we can't get everyone to upgrade to a new protocol.

This is untrue. There is a clear path to adding things like DKIM or SPF. First you add support to the major servers and publish a spec, then you give everyone else a reasonable amount of time to implement it, then you turn it on. This breaks anyone who hasn't implemented it yet, but by then that's only people who suck, and anyway so does dumping all of the mail they send to spam with nothing they can do about it.

The problem with email is that the major providers don't want to do more things like that (e.g. implement hashcash or similar), because it's better for them for the smaller providers to be destroyed than to design a protocol improvement that facilitates their existence.

Which is why it's better for it to be there from the start. But the best time to do it was yesterday and the second best time is today.

>Mastodon still has like four users compared to any of the major social networks. Fix it now even if it takes a breaking change before it hurts more later,

It's already too late. It should have been fixed before Twitter nose-dived. Coming up with a replacement at this point isn't going to work: the Mastodon name is already out there, and this is the time when an alternative has to be ready and usable: it's first-mover advantage.

>There is a clear path to adding things like DKIM or SPF. First you...

So why hasn't this been done yet? We've had decades.

>The problem with email is that the major providers don't want to do more things like that

Exactly my point. Email *can't* be fixed at this point because of first-mover advantage. Incumbents don't want to fix it. Users moved to email because it was available when they were ready, and it was the best alternative at the time.

Mastodon is likely in the same place now. Something better doesn't exist yet, and doesn't have any name recognition. Mastodon itself can't be fixed because the designers like it how it is: if they wanted a better design, they would have designed it that way from the outset. So if Mastodon catches on, we're stuck with it as-is.

> It's already too late. It should have been fixed before Twitter nose-dived.

There's nothing existential wrong with Twitter. Elon Musk generates drama which the media plays up for clicks. It's an open question how many of the people creating Mastodon accounts because a reporter mentioned it are going to be actively using them in six months. And if it continues to be the same kind of garbage fire subject to the whims of oligarchs as the networks people are fleeing, that's not likely to be many. Fixing this kind of problem is how you get people to stay.

> Coming up with a replacement at this point isn't going to work: the Mastodon name is already out there, and this is the time when an alternative has to be ready and usable: it's first-mover advantage.

Twitter has first-mover advantage. Mastodon is still a tiny thing.

> So why hasn't this been done yet? We've had decades.

DKIM and SPF were done. They're widely supported and work as designed.

> Incumbents don't want to fix it.

This is an obstacle, not a death ray. Find a way to exert pressure on the incumbents to fix the problem. Isn't this supposed to be the benefits of centralization I keep hearing about? There are only a couple of parties you have to convince in practice to get something changed?

> Mastodon is likely in the same place now. Something better doesn't exist yet, and doesn't have any name recognition.

There will be a fresh omnishambles causing people to seek alternatives a year from now after you've implemented a proper protocol for people to switch to. Do it now so you're ready for then.

> Mastodon itself can't be fixed because the designers like it how it is: if they wanted a better design, they would have designed it that way from the outset.

That doesn't follow. People frequently make mistakes and regret them later.

> So if Mastodon catches on, we're stuck with it as-is.

So don't use it until they fix it. It's not like Twitter was actually incinerated. What good is switching to a known-broken technology? Wait for the one that works, and in the meantime build it.

>There's nothing existential wrong with Twitter.

Elon is removing all the moderation, so it's going to become infested with trolls and bots quickly. It'll be just like email, but without the spam filtering. On top of that, advertisers are pulling out, so it's going to run out of money and implode. The future of this company does not look good.

>Twitter has first-mover advantage. Mastodon is still a tiny thing.

Go back in time over a decade and you can say the same thing about Digg and Reddit. Where is Digg now?

>DKIM and SPF were done. They're widely supported and work as designed.

No one actually uses them or requires them for email.

>Isn't this supposed to be the benefits of centralization I keep hearing about? There are only a couple of parties you have to convince in practice to get something changed?

No, not really. With centralized services, you get stuff like MySpace and Digg. Then, when things fall apart, they implode, and everyone leaves to alternatives like Facebook and Reddit. No one actually fixes problems; it's just like empires: they rise, enjoy supremacy for a while, then fall apart. No one fixes the problems they have, they just get worse and worse and eventually implode, and later something else rises up in its place.

>What good is switching to a known-broken technology?

Don't ask me, ask the Twitter exodus. I don't use Twitter, just like I was never a Digg or MySpace user. The people who value this stuff aren't going to think the way you do. They'll all flock to some new hot thing, which right now appears to be Mastodon (though it's too early to tell if it'll really catch on).

>and in the meantime build it.

Who? Who's going to build it? Don't look at me; I don't really care about this stuff and am certainly not going to invest my time in it. It seems unlikely that some company is going to build a federated social network to replace Mastodon (which volunteers already built, over the course of many years), though they might make a Twitter clone.

> There's nothing existential wrong with Twitter.

I will return to this comment before a head of lettuce rots.

To be honest, I didn't expect to be back here after only two days. Say again?

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