[AtlasBarfed]

Hm, so a distributed twitter runs into the challenge that each independently managed node is ... and independently managed node. Backup problems etc.

Centralized twitter improves its operations for all users over time. But can be purchased by a nutso billionaire on a whim, or subjected to the """"""national security"""""" directives of the US Government.

[pornel]

Database replicas are "distributed", but not in the sense ActivityPub is.

The same error could have happened on any centralized service that had more than one db instance and background cleanup jobs. I don't think Xitter runs entirely off Elon's laptop yet, so they could have had the same kind of error.

[Brendinooo]

Yeah. Speaking in generalities, decentralization increases overall resilience of a network because it isolates the extent to which bad things can spread. Centralization increases efficiency (and efficacy, if the ruler of the centralized power is competent), and the likelihood of a system-wide failure.

[rsynnott]

Eh. Unusual configuration surfaced a bug, bug was fixed. That's just _normal_.

[olah_1]

Perhaps better is decentralized twitter (Nostr). Your account doesn't live on a server and you send events to multiple servers if you want to. If one server goes down, it hardly impacts you.

[input_sh]

I'm sure all 30 of Nostr users will benefit.

[olah_1]

Yeah, because Mastodon is the most happening place online lol. I can't believe people on hacker news talk like this. Embarrassing how far this community has declined. Can't even discuss protocols without these stupid comments.

[input_sh]

> Yeah, because Mastodon is the most happening place online lol.

Compared to other Twitter alternatives? It absolutely is. It's not even a contest, it's in a league of its own. As embarassing as it sounds, Bluesky, Nostr, Post.news, Spoutible etc don't come even close. (Threads does of course, but the two should be compatible in the near future.)

It's also the only one that 1) didn't come to life as a reaction to Twitter changing ownership, 2) federates between a decent amount of interoperable servers and software right now, not in the future, 3) already has years of experience of dealing with bad actors that are gonna come to any decentralised service, 4) grew organically, not with VC money, and 5) is stable enough that you can choose between dozens of third-party clients (the thing we all complained about Twitter and Reddit killing this year).

A couple of millions of MAU is tiny in comparison to centralised social media (like Instagram), but it's huge in comparison to any other decentralised protocol made this century. There's nothing out there that's gonna dethrone it in usage for the next 3-5 years.

[LexiMax]

> didn't come to life as a reaction to Twitter changing ownership

Small correction, it came to life years before the actual purchase due to the _possibility_ that Twitter could be purchased. This gave it years to mature, and I think the time was well spent for the most part.

Agree with the rest of your points though. Mastodon is really a great platform, even if it's not the best platform for every type of user or use case, and I truly do not understand why it provokes such vitriolic detractors. I was astonished that it was actually easier for me to get updates about what was happening to Twitter during its API and connectivity issues last month from my Mastodon feed than anywhere else, including Twitter itself.

[prmoustache]

In the grand scheme of things, even twitter is anecdotic as only a small and marginal fraction of internet users are using twitter.

It makes the remark above even more idiotic.

[anigbrowl]

A protocol is only as useful as the number of people that adopt it. Network effects and preferential attachment are real phenomena. I've been using Nostr almost since the beginning, so it's not that I am biased against it.

[tedunangst]

What the hell does any of this have to do with protocols or the problem at hand? You're the one who showed mentioning nostr out of nowhere.