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Comment by TechSquidTV | Hacker News Reader

Mastodon is a PERFECT replacement. But it'll never win because there isn't a business propping it up and there is inherent complexity, mixed with the biggest problem, cost.

No one wants to pay for anything, and that's the true root of every issue around this. People complain YouTube has ads, but wont buy premium. People hate Elon and Twitter but won't take even an ounce of temporary inconvenience to try and solve it.

Threads exists, I'm happy they integrate with Activity Pub, which should give us the best of both worlds. Why don't people use Threads? I'd a little more popular outside the US but personally, I think the "algorithm" pushes a lot of engagement bait nonsense.

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>No one wants to pay for anything, and that's the true root of every issue around this. People complain YouTube has ads, but wont buy premium.

Perhaps if buying into a service guaranteed that they would not be sold out then there would be more engagement. When someone signs up it is pretty much a rock-hard guarantee that their personal information will be marketed and sold to any entity with the money and interest to buy it - paying customers, free-loaders, etc.

When someone chooses to buy your app or SaaS then they should be excluded from the list of users that you sell or trade between "business partners".

When paying for a service guarantees that you're selling all details of your engagement with that service to unrelated business entities you have a disincentive to pay.

People are wising up to all this PII harvesting and those clowns who sold everyone out need to find a different model or quit bitching when real people choose to avoid their "services" since most of these things are not necessary for people to enjoy life anyway. They are distractions.

EDIT: This is not intended as a personal attack on you but is instead a general observation from the perspective of someone who does not use or pay for any apps or SaaS services and who actively avoids handing out accurate personal information when the opportunity arises.

Mastodon - mixed feelings.

In my experience, Mastodon is nice until you want to partake in discussions. To do so, you need an account.

With an account you can engage in civilized discussions. Some people don't agree with you, and you don't agree with some people. That's fine, maybe you'll learn something new. It's a discussion.

And then, suddenly, a secret court convenes and kills your account just like that; no reason will be given, no recourse will be available, admins won't reply, and you can do two things: go away for good, or try again on a different server.

I'm happy with a read-only Mastodon via a web interface.

But read-write? Never again, I probably don't have the correct ideology for it.

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