Tweetbot Developer Tapbots Launches 'Ivory' App for Mastodon

[gank41]

It's highly unlikely that Mastodon will be able to rival Twitter in the near future. Despite constantly making threats ever since the change in leadership, none of the people I follow have actually made the switch.

Again, "Mastodon" is a collection of different servers/instances all working together. For comparison's sake, just imagine Twitter being another Server you'd be connecting to. If you were on Mastodon before Elon's takeover, you'd see exactly how much growth is over there, while also seeing less and less tweets on Twitter.

People keep looking at this as a "rival" to Twitter. Someone (Eugen Rochko) decided Twitter was too closed and made more of an open source type version, including a number of other options Twitter just can't or won't do. It's a glorified feed for microblogging (what Twitter was in the beginning). And with apps like Ivory and the like being able to connect the server you're logged in to, to a large number of other servers.. If anything, the 5+ years Mastodon's been around has allowed it to grow and build its backend infrastructure to accommodate a large migration to it, like now.

 

[phenste]

What did developers do in days before subscription model was common?

Let’s not forget that the subscription model is fairly new. It wasn’t always like this. Another model is pay for one-time fee and pay again for major upgrades if you want to upgrade.

I’m reminded that I read user reviews of 1Password 8 that indicated using FaceID to unlock has been broken for about a year and users end up having to type their master password each time instead of quickly unlocking via FaceID. How infuriating is it to subscribe to an app (draining money each month) to not be able to use such a fundamental feature? Nutty. Insane.

you know, I was thinking about this a lot during this entire thread. in my head: “I feel as though people have gotten so entitled when it comes to free mobile apps—do people not remember the days of paying $50 [using Things as as an example] for a Mac app?”

so yes, lump-sum sales models do exist, and they work well for some companies. that 1Password bug is insane, and a shame not only for the customers but especially for the company itself. I won't endorse that. it does remind me of a wonderful password manager that comes for free with one's Apple product(s) though ;-)

smart-a$$ery aside—that is nutty. I'm not going to speak to whether that was a bug that was as infuriating for them to fix as it was infuriating for end-users to experience, or whether they were just being…well, lazy. bugs often take a long time to fix, but a year is quite a long time. then again, we're all using products from a company that makes exponentially more money and sometimes takes years to fix bugs (if they do fix them at all)…anyone else waiting on that revamped Home architecture? or (in the case of third-parties) for Uber to implement live updates on the home screen for the phone I paid $1000+ for when they were in the promo shots so long ago that a child have been conceived and be on the brink of birth in-between?

 

[msackey]

@phenste , I hear ya.

It seems to me that both models of purchase for apps can exist at the same time for the same application: subscription or one-time purchase with additional fee required for each major upgrade.

I've been using computers since the mid-1980s, so am quite well aware of a long period of time when developers were NOT using the subscription model. The arguments that developers not going with subscription model would result in unsustainability seems unfounded.

Yes, there is a password manager that comes free with Apple but many of us cannot rely on that because we need the password managers to be cross-platform accessible.

 

[compwiz1202]

I haven’t participated in the MR forums for years and I don’t remember it being as openly hostile as it is now. Not everyone, of course.

The only time I ever see it get hostile is when it comes to blue vs green. People get outright cruel to users

 

[NEPOBABY]

Or their upcoming VR/AR friends with goggles to escape reality more effectively...

I did VR chat rooms on and off for exactly 20 years and they always bore off. The graphics got better but the same problem remains. Who the **** wants to walk around in 3D and strafe dodge random child stalkers when you can just save so much time and hassle by clicking to reply to people on a regular webpage. Like I did just now.

I can also take my time to write what I think without the pressure of having to speak in the moment while someone in the background with a giant furry elephant avatar is yelling ‘Come at me bro’

 

[phenste]

@phenste , I hear ya.

It seems to me that both models of purchase for apps can exist at the same time for the same application: subscription or one-time purchase with additional fee required for each major upgrade.

I've been using computers since the mid-1980s, so am quite well aware of a long period of time when developers were NOT using the subscription model. The arguments that developers not going with subscription model would result in unsustainability seems unfounded.

Yes, there is a password manager that comes free with Apple but many of us cannot rely on that because we need the password managers to be cross-platform accessible.

like I said, lump-sum models make sense for some companies! I'm with you there. and actually, given that Things was my example in the prior content, the model you described is exactly what they do.

to your point about using computers since the '80s (which I cannot stake claim to, if my join-date on the forums is any indication—and that was five years after I had even started reading this website), I would say that computing has evolved a lot since then (which I'm sure is something you can agree with). they're a part of everyday lives now where they used to be primarily for either businesses or hobbyists.
that has created more developers, and more developers = different goals for each one: there are still people who make freeware, just as something they enjoy doing (just downloaded an app this morning that was from freemacsoft); there are individual devs working their 9-5s that are trying to make what they do into a living with the truly massive customer base that iOS has (or Android, if that's their cup of tea), and subscription models are (as I said in a prior-prior comment) their gateway to doing that, as their customer base starts small and grows; there are companies that have been in the game for a long time, have dedicated teams working on their apps, and app revenue is their main source of income. such companies choose to either do lump-sum models or subscription models. (the former example here often turns into the latter!)

anyway, re: password management, I hear ya on cross-compatibility. that was my Apple bubble coming out for a minute. 😂

 

[CarlJ]

The platform may look kinda like Twitter but it functions nothing like it. Instead of putting all these people into one big conglomerate bucket, users can CHOOSE which places focusing on their niches that they want to be in, while still being able to interact with all the other instances. There's more freedom for the user in this case and I just think not a lot of Twitter users are used to that.

The distributed aspect of it is more of an implementation detail (and it's a very good thing that the entire system isn't moderated at the whim of one out-of-touch billionaire) - in choosing a server you are mostly choosing a local moderation policy. You don't have to interact with the other local users at all, you could just follow, say, macrumors' Mastodon account, and basically all you'd ever see are their posts. So, yeah, you can be on a niche server and interact with the local users a lot, but it's not required.

There's an old saying, "the internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it". That's the real advantage of having the Mastodon federation in the hand of thousands of individual instance admins, rather than one person or corporation.

Mastodon can function just like (idealized) Twitter in that you open it up and see a chronological list of new posts by people you follow, without dipping into the local instance-specific culture. Or you can fully embrace the local culture and dive in, if that's your thing. The real advantage of Mastodon is that it would be very hard for some company to take it over and get their message (or ones they were paid to show) in front of everyone's eyes, the way that Twitter/Facebook do. There's no one overarching company controlling Mastodon, looking to "increase engagement" to improve its quarterly earnings.

One of the recent news items is that Phil Schiller is on Mastodon now. That's cool. What I'd really like to see is an apple.com Mastodon instance. Hell, a whitehouse.gov instance too. Even if it's just copies of what they post to their Twitter accounts, for now. why should they show more support for a private company with a spotty record than for an open source project?

 

[CarlJ]

That’s super easy, barely an inconvenience!

Ah, a man of culture, I see.

 

[CarlJ]

I can remember my Twitter handle quite easily even though I rarely use Twitter. I still can't for Mastodon and I have actually 2 registrations with 2 different Mastodon servers.

Eh, when you tell someone your email address, you have to tell them a username and a domain. Mastodon is the same. Yes, it's a tiny bit more difficult than a Twitter handle, but I don't see people complaining that email addresses are too hard to remember, or transcribe, or enter.

 

[CarlJ]

Remember app.net? 😑

Yes, I remember it. It didn't have a ton of compelling features as a Twitter alternative, and Twitter wasn't as arbitrary and capricious in its moderation / policies then. Mastodon is more compelling.

 

[CarlJ]

Checked out Mastodon on their main feed, and of ~100 posts, 20 were ads or promotion related, 78 were complaints or griping about one thing or another. 2 were informative, helpful, or positive.

There's no such thing as "Mastodon's main feed". There's hundreds (thousands?) of Mastodon instances. No one of them is "the main one".

You can look at the "Local" section on a Mastodon instance and you'll see things the local people on that instance are posting or boosting/retweeting. If you especially dislike it, find yourself a different instance that is more appealing to you. (You can also look at the "Federated" section and see posts that have been pulled into the local instance because someone on the instance follows that account, or "Explore", that shows things that are trending system-wide - for some fuzzy definition of "system-wide").

When you create an account on one and add some accounts to follow, you see posts by those accounts, or posts that those accounts have "boosted" (akin to retweeting). There's no "promoted tweets" like there are on Twitter, there's no "you should probably follow these accounts" sections, like on Twitter. And on both Twitter and Mastodon, you can find a lot of people complaining about a lot of things - that's not the fault of either Twitter or Mastodon, that's the nature of people.

I don't think I've seen anything that I would categorize directly as ads, in my short time on Mastodon thus far. I've seen a number of announcements of things from people I follow, but I don't feel like I've been advertised to like on the rare times I watch broadcast TV, or like I'm being unsubtly nudged to like/follow/buy things that some corporation wants me to like/follow/buy, like I see when I visit Twitter.

 

[CarlJ]

1Password

Thank you. I should be following them.

 

[gank41]

I created my own instance and then setup about 10 accounts for some friends and I, and then we've got a glorified feed instead of a group iMessage chat. It's the kind of thing that will play out over a long time as opposed to sucking up some constant feed of dribble on Twitter. And we can all use different apps to get there. I'm using Ivory while I know another friend is using IceCubes, and then the rest the "main" Mastodon app.

 

[lysingur]

Again, "Mastodon" is a collection of different servers/instances all working together. For comparison's sake, just imagine Twitter being another Server you'd be connecting to. If you were on Mastodon before Elon's takeover, you'd see exactly how much growth is over there, while also seeing less and less tweets on Twitter.

People keep looking at this as a "rival" to Twitter. Someone (Eugen Rochko) decided Twitter was too closed and made more of an open source type version, including a number of other options Twitter just can't or won't do. It's a glorified feed for microblogging (what Twitter was in the beginning). And with apps like Ivory and the like being able to connect the server you're logged in to, to a large number of other servers.. If anything, the 5+ years Mastodon's been around has allowed it to grow and build its backend infrastructure to accommodate a large migration to it, like now.

So Eugen Rochko created Mastodon because he was dissatisfied with Twitter, but Mastodon isn't a rival to Twitter. Noted.

 

[gank41]

So Eugen Rochko created Mastodon because he was dissatisfied with Twitter, but Mastodon isn't a rival to Twitter. Noted.

I'm old enough to remember having 4-5 MySpace Music Accounts, each with their own scrollable "feed" of posts from folks I followed. Much like Twitter, Facebook, and even Friendster was.
Sooo... Seems like, IMO & at the time, that a "Social Media Platform" was just a feed of posts from accounts you followed. Doesn't seem like Eugen was copying Twitter, more so just creating a better open "Social Media" platform since they all did roughly the same thing.

I guess it's all about perspective. Mastodon hasn't been around nearly as long as Twitter, but Mastodon has become a very powerful platform in an extremely short amount of time. No one can deny that. And the fact that it's literally run like as an open community and not housed in one central location and in control by one person (think torrent files as opposed to single location downloads), how can it NOT continue to grow?

I'm not even saying anything about the person running the bird site. Think of him what you will.. I'm only talking about the actual technology of it all. Twitter has to be Twitter. It can change, but still has to be itself, unless they "reinvent" themselves. It's still "Twitter". Mastodon can quite literally take on whatever it wants and be any infinite number of things. Like I said before, I created our own private instance to be used solely amongst friends. We're all private, friends with each other, and now a core group of about 10 of my friends of 20-30+ years can have our own private feed of posts. That's crazy! Then I switch to another account I use for Music and can look at my "local" feed to see a more curated feed of music related posts. Our BandCamp page is getting more traffic. Then I go to my original account I created in 2018, and all of my "Twitter Tech Feed" folks are there, posting actively and interactively with me, way more than I ever saw on Twitter. This whole thing is very very young still, but it all has the feel of Twitter circa 2009-2012, but all happening in a 2-3 month period.

 

[lysingur]

Mastodon benefited from a minority of people's dislike of Elon, not their yearning for freedom of speech. Twitter was heavily 'censored' before Elon took over, and you heard few complaints from the people who are threatening to leave now. Attention is the equivalent of gold for people who rely on their online presence for a living, e.g., positivity peddlers, content creators, tech writers, etc. How many people would willingly give up the influence they worked so hard for to support an ideology they can benefit so little from?

This is not to mention Mastodon isn't exactly free from 'censors' either. It simply delegates the power of censorship to the moderator of each instance. The moderator of each instance can even read all the DMs in that instance. How is that better than Twitter in terms of freedom of speech?

 

[gank41]

Mastodon benefited from a minority of people's dislike of Elon, not their yearning for freedom of speech. Twitter was heavily 'censored' before Elon took over, and you heard few complaints from the people who are threatening to leave now. Attention is the equivalent of gold for people who rely on their online presence for a living, e.g., positivity peddlers, content creators, tech writers, etc. How many people would willingly give up the influence they worked so hard for to support an ideology they can benefit so little from?

This is not to mention Mastodon isn't exactly free from 'censors' either. It simply delegates the power of censorship to the moderator of each instance. The moderator of each instance can even read all the DMs in that instance. How is that better than Twitter in terms of freedom of speech?

I think you’re confusing “freedom of speech” with the ability to tell people to F off or some other BS Twitter is full of. Moderation and Censorship are different things. Think “don’t be a jerk” instead.

 

[MisterSavage]

Updated post on Ivory's roadmap.

Ivory by Tapbots :emoji_wink: (@ivory@tapbots.social)

Attached: 1 image Hello Friends, Wanted to make a note that our current roadmap is on our website: https://tapbots.com/ivory/#roadmap We are a small company of 3 people and only 1 of us replies on this account. Between all the emails and messages here, it's hard to always answer everyone, but...

tapbots.social

And the fact that it's literally run like as an open community and not housed in one central location and in control by one person (think torrent files as opposed to single location downloads), how can it NOT continue to grow?

Exactly. If your server changes for the worst you can move to another one. One person isn't calling the shots and I like that.

 

[gank41]

Updated post on Ivory's roadmap.

Ivory by Tapbots :emoji_wink: (@ivory@tapbots.social)

Attached: 1 image Hello Friends, Wanted to make a note that our current roadmap is on our website: https://tapbots.com/ivory/#roadmap We are a small company of 3 people and only 1 of us replies on this account. Between all the emails and messages here, it's hard to always answer everyone, but...

tapbots.social

Exactly. If your server changes for the worst you can move to another one. One person isn't calling the shots and I like that.

And I believe part of, or what's automatically included in ALL Mastodon instance's account preferences is the ability to move to & from another instance. It's baked in, regardless of where you sign up. I was fortunate (I guess?) to be on a @mastodon.social and @mstdn.social account years ago. I can see how it'd be confusing signing up now, but at least you can see the number of users on each when you're signing up. You can get some sort of idea how popular one might be, and still connect and browse other instances all the same.

 

[eyeseeyou]

Updated post on Ivory's roadmap.

Ivory by Tapbots :emoji_wink: (@ivory@tapbots.social)

Attached: 1 image Hello Friends, Wanted to make a note that our current roadmap is on our website: https://tapbots.com/ivory/#roadmap We are a small company of 3 people and only 1 of us replies on this account. Between all the emails and messages here, it's hard to always answer everyone, but...

tapbots.social

Exactly. If your server changes for the worst you can move to another one. One person isn't calling the shots and I like that.

But isn't there always someone calling the shots?

 

[NEPOBABY]

Mastodon benefited from a minority of people's dislike of Elon, not their yearning for freedom of speech. Twitter was heavily 'censored' before Elon took over, and you heard few complaints from the people who are threatening to leave now. Attention is the equivalent of gold for people who rely on their online presence for a living, e.g., positivity peddlers, content creators, tech writers, etc. How many people would willingly give up the influence they worked so hard for to support an ideology they can benefit so little from?

This is not to mention Mastodon isn't exactly free from 'censors' either. It simply delegates the power of censorship to the moderator of each instance. The moderator of each instance can even read all the DMs in that instance. How is that better than Twitter in terms of freedom of speech?

Are you saying all that on a moderated forum? Are you defending a now extremely hateful platform largely owned by autocrats who don’t allow free speech in their own country and dismember journalists who offend them?

 

[lysingur]

Are you saying all that on a moderated forum? Are you defending a now extremely hateful platform largely owned by autocrats who don’t allow free speech in their own country and dismember journalists who offend them?

I really hope you don't drive a car with a combustion engine.

 

[lysingur]

I'm old enough to remember having 4-5 MySpace Music Accounts, each with their own scrollable "feed" of posts from folks I followed. Much like Twitter, Facebook, and even Friendster was.
Sooo... Seems like, IMO & at the time, that a "Social Media Platform" was just a feed of posts from accounts you followed. Doesn't seem like Eugen was copying Twitter, more so just creating a better open "Social Media" platform since they all did roughly the same thing.

I guess it's all about perspective. Mastodon hasn't been around nearly as long as Twitter, but Mastodon has become a very powerful platform in an extremely short amount of time. No one can deny that. And the fact that it's literally run like as an open community and not housed in one central location and in control by one person (think torrent files as opposed to single location downloads), how can it NOT continue to grow?

I'm not even saying anything about the person running the bird site. Think of him what you will.. I'm only talking about the actual technology of it all. Twitter has to be Twitter. It can change, but still has to be itself, unless they "reinvent" themselves. It's still "Twitter". Mastodon can quite literally take on whatever it wants and be any infinite number of things. Like I said before, I created our own private instance to be used solely amongst friends. We're all private, friends with each other, and now a core group of about 10 of my friends of 20-30+ years can have our own private feed of posts. That's crazy! Then I switch to another account I use for Music and can look at my "local" feed to see a more curated feed of music related posts. Our BandCamp page is getting more traffic. Then I go to my original account I created in 2018, and all of my "Twitter Tech Feed" folks are there, posting actively and interactively with me, way more than I ever saw on Twitter. This whole thing is very very young still, but it all has the feel of Twitter circa 2009-2012, but all happening in a 2-3 month period.

Nobody said Eugen was copying Twitter. If you really want an honest debate, take the time to read and don't twist other people's words.

How's Mastodon "powerful"? Almost nobody who is anybody is exclusively on Mastodon.

Mastodon already stopped growing. The number of active users on that platform has levelled off.

I'm glad you're enjoying Mastodon. But don't confuse your personal preference with its trajectory as a platform. Moderation can be used as a form of censorship. In fact, it has been used as such on Twitter and other social media. I doubt it's any different on Mastodon. In fact, it's probably worse and more arbitrary as the moderator isn't accountable to anybody in a decentralized platform.

Your sole argument in Mastodon vs Twitter is that Mastodon is a freer platform, but if you only care to look at the evidence, it's just not the case. So there goes your entire opposition to Twitter. Of course, anybody is free to choose which social media they want to be on, just don't pretend Mastodon is somehow a bastion of free speech.

 

[lysingur]

Updated post on Ivory's roadmap.

Ivory by Tapbots :emoji_wink: (@ivory@tapbots.social)

Attached: 1 image Hello Friends, Wanted to make a note that our current roadmap is on our website: https://tapbots.com/ivory/#roadmap We are a small company of 3 people and only 1 of us replies on this account. Between all the emails and messages here, it's hard to always answer everyone, but...

tapbots.social

Exactly. If your server changes for the worst you can move to another one. One person isn't calling the shots and I like that.

And what happens to things you posted on that server?



Exactly.

One person is calling the shot. You're just too blind to realize it. Just because you can move to another server doesn't mean there is no censorship.

 

[Abazigal]

Here’s what the dev of Twitterific noticed after moving to Mastodon.

Ged Maheux (@gedeonm@mastodon.social)

Attached: 2 images The @Iconfactory@iconfactory.world has 16.1k “followers” on Twitter and currently about 4.1k here on Mastodon. Our last post received a whopping 9 likes and 3 retweets on Twitter and an amazing 287 favorites and 163 boosts here on Mastodon. This has been said before by many...

mastodon.social

A trend I suspect will become even more apparent now that twitter has view counts.