Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter: Elevator Pitch - <AUTHOR> https://www.codesections.com/blog/mastodon-elevator-pitch/ <comment><USER2> OK, here's the problem in a nutshell: no one among _regular_ people cares. You guys are splitting hairs right now when talking about the difference between tweeting and boosting or public companies vs open source or what have you. None of that attracts users. If you have no users, then for regular people, your product is useless. Even the article is not really making a pitch for mastodon that indicates any features at all that would convince any of Kim K or Kylie Jenner's followers to go take a look at it. I'll even go a step further and say that Mastodon is probably more for fringe groups than for the unwashed masses those fringe groups are trying to influence.

Look, you want me to get excited about Mastodon? Show me something exciting I can do with it that I can't do with twitter, instagram, or Snapchat. Is there some triple-I indie game that Mastodon will allow me to play in my browser? (Or triple-A non indie? I'm not picky. Just don't show me a point and click please.) Post the link for that game, you'll get a lot more people trying Mastodon. Alternatively, is there some new and novel porn that Mastodon will allow me to access? Or is there a new generation of FIFA stars on Mastodon? Or new generation of NBA stars? I mean, even a new generation of "It" Girls chasing NBA stars would be better for attracting users than "thoughtful and local uncommented retweets". Which is not only what you're asking me to get excited about right now, but is likely not even true. Boosts will be no more thoughtful than retweets, likely a good deal less thoughtful since Mastodon seems to be on a road that relegates it to fringe groups.

Right now, it's like buying a large tract of land in Kansas and saying that you've started a new municipality. No we don't have beaches, or theaters, or parks, or much of anything else, but everyone here is more thoughtful. so we're _much_ better than Miami, San Diego, or Minneapolis.

I mean, it _might_ work? But I think Las Vegas hit on a much better method of populating empty area by just saying, "HEY! We've got gambling and naked women!"

<comment><USER3> The big social media sites are in the process of evicting everyone who doesn't 100% agree with them. We've seen this kind of thing in history before, and the one thing we know about it is that it is a process without end. Once one group gets removed, another group becomes the outlier, and they become the next target, and so on. Heck, they're already banning political ads from mainstream candidates for US Congress.

This creates a demand for alternatives. Once a community moves to a system like Mastodon, that creates a demand for that system.

No one cares about myspace anymore. In 10 years, noone will care about twitter. That's the nature of technology.

<comment><USER4> "The big social media sites are in the process of evicting everyone who doesn't 100% agree with them"

That is a flat-out lie, unless you disagree with the terms of service. Find me one person that was booted that wasn't booted for violating the ToS.

<comment><USER3> You might want to get outside of your bubble a little instead of making accusations like that.

Perhaps you could explain the case of Elizabeth Heng, a candidate in CA of the US Congress?

<comment><USER4> I think you might need to get out of your bubble, if you think that most of these people are just "disagreeing".

As for your example, she violated the ToS. They then changed their minds. I'm not seeing the grave injustice you're claiming.

<comment><USER3> Take a step back and look at what you're justifying.

A candidate from a mainstream party for US Congress with mainstream views creates an ad about her past that is true and historical, and that gets banned.

Hiding behind vague TOS does not cut it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From the article:

> _Twitter Is in the Outrage Business; Mastodon Isn 't a Business_

I need to spend way more time thinking about this, but I feel like in some scenarios there is a competitive advantage to not needing to care about stuff like stock prices or insane prices.

If you can get a business or a project to the point where it's stable and competitive and it's funding you _enough_ to keep going, then there's a whole bunch of stuff that you don't need to care about. That's obviously not universal, but there are clearly downsides to large businesses. There are things that large business will always be worse at then a small business or personal project.

Again, I haven't thought enough about this to make a cognizant point, but... it feels like something I want to think about more. Being a nonprofit or a small business or a completely non-commercial entity should in some instances give you a competitive advantage over other businesses. Facebook can copy every single feature and then some of Snapchat.

But Twitter can't really copy everything that Mastadon is doing, because some of the stuff that Mastadon is doing is completely contradictory to Twitter's entire business model. I feel like there's something to be said about (if you're in Mastadon's position) figuring out some way to tie at least a few public-facing features into that nonprofit model that you know, 100%, your largest competitors will literally never be able to do.

<comment><USER6> It's worth noting that one of the supporting points here

 _> And Twitter doesn't have any choice in the matter, either. [...] Twitter is a public company, funded by investor money; they thus owe a legal duty to make as much money for their investors as they can_

is not, strictly speaking, true. This has been discussed a few times on HN recently. (And this book _The Shareholder Value Myth_ is well worth reading: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17529520](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17529520) .) There's no categorical legal requirement for a company to make share value the absolute, #1 priority. On the other hand, it may be that enough people believe this duty exists that it has a sort of _ipso facto_ existence.

<comment><USER7> If investors feel that profit is not being maximized, they can sue or take other actions to punish those they see as not focusing on profit etc.

I mean, the point is that "you aren't prioritizing profit" has legal standing for investors. And "we don't prioritize profit in cases that involve harming the world" does _not_ is not a legal stance for the company unless the harm itself is illegal or the entity is a Benefit Corp or similar.

<comment><USER8> I agree that investors may sue management for fraud or corruption. "Not maximizing profit" is neither fraudulent nor corrupt.

Investors who feel that profit is not being maximized can sell their shares or can vote to replace management. They can also buy sufficient shares from other unhappy shareholders to let them take control of the company altogether, and manage it themselves.

What evidence do you have that any shareholder has ever won a lawsuit against a company on the basis that the company was not maximizing profits?

<comment><USER9> It's true that investors can sell if profit isn't being maximized, but how often does that happen in privately held companies?

E.g. if startup X has the tech to take over a market, but is insufficiently pursuing a profit opportunity because of moral squeamishness, chances are relatively good that investors in X will simply replace the executives with somebody that will pursue those opportunities since that's vastly cheaper than building up competitive tech in a new investment.

Similarly with publicly traded companies, not pursuing profit opportunities can result in large sell offs of a stock. You see a lot of animus against short sellers that suggests that the "businesses must maximize profit" norm is thoroughly ingrained in investor communities even if it's not legally mandatory.

<comment><USER10> _Similarly with publicly traded companies, not pursuing profit opportunities can result in large sell offs of a stock._

That isn't obviously true. Eg, Amazon spent years actively doing everything possible to avoid making profits.

If investors don't like a company's strategy then they can try to get management changes or they can sell. But company strategy goes way beyond the blind pursuit of profit.

 _E.g. if startup X has the tech to take over a market, but is insufficiently pursuing a profit opportunity because of moral squeamishness, chances are relatively good that investors in X will simply replace the executives with somebody that will pursue those opportunities since that 's vastly cheaper than building up competitive tech in a new investment._

That maybe true sometimes, but it is a lot rarer than you seem to believe (especially with early stage companies). The team running the company is a very large part of what people invest it. As a good counter example: Uber. Few would say that Travis wasn't pursuing profit every way possible, and it was the investors that moved against him because of his bad moral judgment.

<comment><USER9> With early stage companies, often what happens is investors subsidize an investment precisely because they know what the profit strategy is and because they think it's strong.

With Uber, Travis was attempting to undercut competition. Investors subsidize rides because when there is no competition they are in a better place to profit. Amazon (I believe?) was reinvesting the money in the business while subsidizing prices and package delivery to gain loyal customers. Many times an investor will subsidize a no-advertisement experience to gain an audience, and then switch on ads when the network effects are strong enough to retain the audience.

This is basically Machiavelli's advice that new princes should give favors to the masses when they rise to power, so that their positions are stronger later. But the real goal is always to turn profit aggressively, even if investors are patient for a few years while they maneuver into the right position.

Also just to be clear, no investor wants a business to pursue _every_ profit opportunity. They want the business to focus on a strategy that will maximize profit given their strengths, and that always involves focus rather than being distracted by every possible opportunity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I went to the Mastodon website and clicked "Get Started" and was brought to a menu where I needed to choose a server. Many of them focus on niche interests, and it was not very clear what to do if I wanted to be a member of more than one of them.

I'm a techie; I could figure it out. But it is too much to ask of the general public to wade through many niche servers they won't understand, e.g. the one for BSD fans and multiple furry-themed servers. And there seem to be several overlapping Chinese-language servers -- which one should a Chinese newbie choose? And what prevents each server from devolving into a petty little fiefdom where the moderators abuse their power?

Compare that to getting started on Twitter: pick a username and password, boom, done!

The Mastodon project is clearly designed for a technical audience, whether or not that is what they actually intended. Outside of the techie bubble the usability is just not there.

<comment><USER12> You make a good point (and one that's being worked on being overcome, better onboarding and whatever).

But consider twitter:

>Compare that to getting started on Twitter: pick a username and password, boom, done!

And then what? follow some celebs? Figure out if you know anyone? On mastodon you can use the local feed to find people interested in the same subjects (or same culture), and then you start talking. I've seen many people be surprised that within an hour or two on mastodon they've had more and better interactions than years on twitter. The experience once you're there tends to be quite good (from my completely unbiased and scientific viewpoint, of course)

<comment><USER13> Wait, so once you've overcome the off-putting insanely technical (who in their right mind thinks about "servers" outside of tech circles?) onboarding, mastodon is a lot better?

It does not make an iota of difference.

<comment><USER12> >who in their right mind thinks about "servers" outside of tech circles?

the way a lot of subreddits are used, for example, is intuitive enough to people who get used to the concept. 'servers' or 'instances' as a word might be too technical, but the concept of different groups you join, while still being able to talk to others? Of course my experience is 99% people who _have_ persisted and joined, but they seem to enjoy it.

Mostly because you join, you think "this is confusing but I've arrived" and there's a few hundred people on the same instance who are interested in similar things, who know people from other instances who have similar interests, etc. I think it might help build a network quicker (or at least, that's what I've heard from a lot of newer people that have joined since I've been there!)

<comment><USER14> But you can only create your account on one server. It feels limiting compared to subreddits, which you use a centralized account to subscribe to several.

<comment><USER15> You can follow anyone on any other Mastodon server with that one account, so it's basically the same. That's what the federation is for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > One of the most pernicious parts of Twitter is how people will retweet > something dumb, offensive, or awful that an opponent said, along with a > message mocking that opponent. Over time, this leads people on all sides of > an issue to see only a distorted caricature of their opponents, comprised of > an amalgam of all the worst features of that group.

> How does Mastodon solve this issue? Well, Mastodon doesn't have retweets; it > has "boosts". Boosts are essentially like retweets, with one key difference: > there's no option to add your own commentary.

I think "Right problem, wrong solution". The reason people mock bad ideas on Twitter is probably because Twitter has a character limit. Refuting bad ideas often takes longer than 240 characters. In fact, putting forward bad ideas takes less time and energy than refuting them. This is why, usually, burden of proof is placed on the one making a claim. Otherwise people who value truth will be exhausted from the approximately 10 times the effort it takes to refute false claims and truth will never win out.

Showing bad ideas to be bad is very important in civil discourse, not being able to point out bad ideas by "retweeting" them with commentary will likely make this social network an echo chamber devoid of intellectual curiosity

<comment><USER17> > I think "Right problem, wrong solution". The reason people mock bad ideas on > Twitter is probably because Twitter has a character limit. Refuting bad > ideas often takes longer than 240 characters.

It's not even the right problem.

The problem is not mocking people, disagreeing with them or whatever (incidentally the twitter character limit doesn't preclude external links or tweet chains, which are extremely common at least in science twitter). It's that doing so through a retweet (or a boost) is a signal to followers, and that can send hordes harassing a single person, because it's very easy for followers to click on the RT/boost and reply, and they're not going to see that _thousands_ of people already did exactly that.

And the person at the other end of the pipe has to deal with a flood of burning garbage.

And more generally that kind of crap is easily weaponisable, twitter provides few tools to deal with it, and they don't usually apply their own rules. I don't know that Mastodon is any better.

Fundamentally, social platforms are only good so long as they've not reached their eternal September yet, or are actively prevented from doing so through active and unforgiving moderation — which can have its own issues.

<comment><USER18> Is this really such a big problem, especially for the average user, to make it a key feature of the platform?

Sure, occasionally an otherwise obscure person might find themselves at the end of an unexpected shitstorm, but otherwise it generally affects more prominent users, who are _well aware_ that anything mildly controversial can turn into lots of angry replies.

Is _that_ even a real problem? Isn't it actually valuable information to know that people get really angry about this-and-that? Aren't researchers able to use this data to learn something about human behavior?

Seems to me like people want to blame technology for something that's really amplified human nature. A rehashing the old story of the "basically good" human corrupted by some foreign evil.

<comment><USER17> > Sure, occasionally an otherwise obscure person might find themselves at the > end of an unexpected shitstorm, but otherwise it generally affects more > prominent users, who are well aware that anything mildly controversial can > turn into lots of angry replies.

And that's supposed to be a good or even neutral thing… how?

> Is that even a real problem?

Very much so.

> Isn't it actually valuable information to know that people get really angry > about this-and-that?

Not really, and that isn't even relevant to the issue of it actively harming people.

> Seems to me like people want to blame technology for something that's really > amplified human nature. A rehashing the old story of the "basically good" > human corrupted by some foreign evil.

You're the only one talking about "basically good human". The amplification of human nature is the very issue at hand, "human nature" has not evolved in that context and while it may work at small scales it demonstrably does not at the scales we're involved in. As a result it is ethically and functionally necessary for the tool to mitigate human nature since they're the ones amplifying it to downright and outright harmful levels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a good article. I just wanted to take issue with this claim: "Twitter is a public company, funded by investor money; they thus owe a legal duty to make as much money for their investors as they can."

This is a common misconception. While public companies have some duties to shareholders they are not required to maximise profits as such: [https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are- co...](https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations- obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits)

It's important to be aware of this so that corporations cannot use this excuse to get off the hook for otherwise immoral behaviour.

<comment><USER8> Thank you for battling against the "must maximize profits" antipattern.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The posting from a few days ago that reimagined email as a social network really got me thinking how much our approach to social networks has been led by the webbification of everything.

The spirit-of-the-nineties approach to recreating mastodon would probably look like one or two dominant native apps and something like a newsgroup server. Or maybe something like a really great RSS reader.

Questions about federation vs a walled controlled servive would be silly, because technologists are fighting it out to sell the best app. And of course a walled-in service is stupid because that would be as obsolete as Compuserve.

We're all fighting it out on the web now. Well, except possibly on iOS and (grudgingly) Android. In some ways I think the web was how we geeks made survival on Linux possible, as we never had the mass to demand desktop apps.

Part of what I liked about the reimagining of email as social media was that it allowed for the return of the app. In the case of Mastodon, the protocols are presumably open and don't preclude interaction via apps. So here the question of web or heavy client is not technical but one of point of view or preference.

This is all to say I kind of miss when we were chasing "the killer app" as opposed to competing for service share. When the focus was on the user's desktop, any associated service was more or less seen as boring plumbing—-certainly nothing to have brand affinity for.

EDIT: Case in point, there's another comment explaining that Mastodon doesn't let you move instances and retain followers. In the 90s app-centric view of the world this is a non-issue, because following other people is the client's job, for better or worse. Your computer crashes, you lose who you were following. If you want to publish who you're following that's you or your client's job.

Giving up your social network graph to the service provider isn't an issue in the heavy client model, because the 90s service isn't going to pay to store that information on your behalf anyway. It wasn't because the service viewed that personal information as "oily rags"; it was because they simply didn't want to expend the resources to store it.

<comment><USER21> _In the 90s app-centric view of the world this is a non-issue, because following other people is the client's job, for better or worse._

In the 90s, if you moved from your universities' mail server to Lycos, you also lose all the people who you were following, since they still had the previous email address.

Mastodon just happens to work in the reverse (you have a list of people you follow, rather than of people who follow you, as in email), but the issue is the same.

<comment><USER20> Yes, though it was hypothetically possible to buy a domain and host your own email. Not a solution for most people in those days, certainly!

That's gotten harder and easier today. It's never been harder to properly manage a mailserver yourself. On the other hand, registering a vanity domain and hosting with a neutral 3rd party like (my current) Fastmail has never been easier.

Someone should make a startup that suggests and registers a vanity domain on users' behalf and then configures the email hosting provider of the user's choice, spelling out the costs and tradeoffs of each. Work out the billing with a handful of providers and take a small monthly cut. It's probably a beer money startup :-)

Come to think of it, given this problem is so old, I'd be surprised if nobody has made this.

<comment><USER22> I'm surprised FastMail hasn't made it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >Finally, with instances, you keep control: if you find that you don't like the moderation policies or culture of a particular instance, you're always free to pick up and move to a different one.

Last I heard, Mastodon didn't support migration between instances while still keeping followers, etc. Instead, you have to essentially start from scratch with a new account on a new instance. This is a serious problem because it strongly discourages exodus; Twitter itself shows that people will put up with a lot of nonsense before leaving to alternatives because they've cultivated a brand and a following and don't want to lose it all. Moderators of instances are not a static thing; like any political system it shifts with whoever is in charge over time. An instance that seemed friendly to a user initially can over time become more oppressive to them, but the user has invested so much into that instance that they would have to leave behind that they'd put up with it when they shouldn't have to.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, I spent a few weeks (months?) on Mastodon, and even though I was on a cooperatively owned and operated instance[0] it just wasn't a substitute for a fully p2p social network.

I found another network called Scuttlebutt[1] that I've been using almost daily. It has a few neat features:

\- your account is just your public key

\- your profile is an append-only feed of JSON messages, each cryptographically signed

\- when you follow people you replicate their profile on your device

\- messages are transmitted with an eventually consistent gossip network, which is fast and resilient

\- you can assign nicknames to yourself and others, and since there isn't a central naming authority (if you have two friends named Matt, you get to disambiguate however you would in real life)

\- all data is downloaded locally, so you can view all the same content whether you're online or off-grid

\- you can reply while offline and your messages will sync when you peer again (again, think gossip networks)

\- there are tons of different clients and implementations and applications running on the network

      - Twitter-like posts

      - IRC-like chat

      - blogging

      - Signal-like private messages

      - image search

      - chess (!)

      - secret sharding among friends (!!)

      - mutual credit

      - by far the best community I've ever been a part of

Anyway, if you want to love Mastodon you might look into Scuttlebutt.

[0]: [https://social.coop](https://social.coop)

[1]: [https://scuttlebutt.nz](https://scuttlebutt.nz)

EDIT: having trouble formatting the list, did I mention that Scuttlebutt supports full Markdown?

<comment><USER25> Giving scuttlebutt a try - thanks! Here are my experiences:

1\. App seems quite unpolished for Windows, it looks best not maximized. I was asked to provide a name and was a little disconcerted by the message that this is going to be public and cannot be deleted.

2\. I've now joined a public server. This required going to a github page, following a link and copying and pasting an "invite" into the Patchwork application. The first one I tried threw and error that I didn't understand, but the second one worked and connected me to over 700 people.

3\. The channels page is completely empty.. it seems like all I can see is a feed of people following one another.

4\. Problem above solved by re-starting the app! Now taking a long time to download information, but I can see actual content.

5\. I posted my first reply to someone's message. You get the prompt reminding you that everything is public and forever every time it seems.

My overall impression after about 30 minutes doing the above is that this is potentially really cool, but a few steps away from being immediately usable by someone who isn't tech oriented. Going to try a few more Scuttlebutt apps as I'm curious how well my identity can transition across different clients.

<comment><USER26> I'm not a user, but I have been watching it (and its related projects on github). I believe Patchwork[0] is the social network you joined, and it is _based_ on scuttlebutt[1].

It seems like very early times for most people even considering the downsides of centralized 'social media,' and it will take time and hand-holding to demonstrate the alternative possibilities. A great client app that could unify the user experience, but offer power-user features could go a long way. Most people that I know (older) are not overtly interested in participating in any public social network (i.e. Twitter).

I wonder if one could build a more closed, private, white-list-default (triple opt-in!) type of social network on top of SSB with the right client software?

[0] "A decentralized messaging and sharing app built on top of Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB)." [https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork](https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork)

[1] "A database of unforgeable append-only feeds, optimized for efficient replication for peer to peer protocols" [https://github.com/ssbc/secure- scuttlebutt](https://github.com/ssbc/secure-scuttlebutt)

<comment><USER24> Yep, Patchwork is a Scuttlebutt client that implements some of the most common funxtionality: pubs, following, blocking, posts, likes, replies, and some profile data.

Other clients like Patchbay do that _plus_ more experimental features, but it's all running on top of Scuttlebutt and you can change clients at any time.

If you're familiar with cryptocurrencies, these clients ate like wallets -- there are a ton of different ones with all sorts of pros and cons, but you're still on the same network with the same append-only feeds.

With that said, these _are_ rough around the edges, especially when it comes to entering the network for the first time. We've got a lot of work to do. I appreciate the feedback!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I recently joined Twitter and I have to agree that Retweets are the most cancerous part.

Accounts with many followers act like schoolyard bullies with their gang of yes men.

I still see federation as being too niche, but it doesn't have to be that way! I think in an ideal situation, federated servers would rely more on physical location than on deviant niche hobbies or addictions.

The Smith family should have a server (or your neighborhood should) rather than cyberpunk.furry.foxes. Because the reality is that people are more than just one thing and the concept breaks down when you start discussing action movies or cryptography on your @firstname.lastname@example.com account.

I think secure-scuttlebutt goes for more of the real world location-based server concept a bit. But I think most people prefer the peace of mind of some kind of administration being possible if needed.

<comment><USER28> ISPs could even provide the federated services like they provide e-mail. Another way it might work is companies that sell people federated service servers as products that they can deploy for example in their home or let the company host it. In any case maintenance must be included. I don't see how federated will take off without commercial support. The Smiths might be technically capable but I doubt the Jones's who are not are willing to let the Smiths control their service. That kind of defeats the point.

<comment><USER29> Do people use ISPs email anymore?

<comment><USER11> Yes, and it keeps people locked in to their ISP because switching would involve updating the email address in all of their online accounts and notifying all of their contacts about the change.

I finally convinced my parents to bite the bullet and switch to Gmail so they can switch to a better ISP. It's a real problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think the term "toots" is spectacularly bad, and could majorly hinder broader uptake of their service.

Word of mouth (or 'word of text') is a major way services like this spread. Imagine discussions of Twitter in the media but where the words "tweet" and "tweeted" are replaced with "toot" and "tooted".

<comment><USER6> Can you elaborate on the problem you see with the word "toot"?

<comment><USER31> It's an onomatopoeic term for briefly sounding a horn, but I almost never hear it used for that. In my experience, there are two primary uses of the word in American English:

1) In the expression _toot [one 's] own horn_, which means to praise oneself. Often in the form "I don't want to toot my own horn, but [...]".

2) A cutesy word for a fart, used primarily when talking to young children.

Notably, an elephant using its trunk to make noise is said to be _trumpeting_ , not _tooting_.

<comment><USER32> So I'm born and raised in the US Midwest, and in my entire life 'toot' was never used as euphemism for 'fart' except in the context of the elementary school rhyme. I can perfectly understand people not liking the sound of the word or even how it looks, but the fart connotation seems like a manufactured rationale to me. Actually, for the population that would possibly use the word that way, i.e. 8 year-olds, the usage would be a positive feature, not a negative.

<comment><USER30> It may not have that meaning for you, but it does for others. It's nothing manufactured.

And, for many people, it's the only meaning that naturally comes to mind in phrases like "I tooted" or "Joe tooted".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I can't quite get over this critiquing of Twitter's Retweet system. I totally understand how it's misused but all the benefits are overlooked too. I love retweeting with commentary for positive reasons. I find they are a great way to validate and engage people who reply. I never think of using them as a tool for shaming, so I would be sad to see the feature go.

<comment><USER34> There's two issues I'm concerned about. As you mentioned, one is yanking retweets because 'it can be used for ill'. I doubt that would make any real difference in toxic behavior, but would hurt positive commentary more.

The other concern is the "block posts by tag" (e.g. ban all #politics). This could cause an even greater problem where it allow stronger social bubbles to form because one side could outright block the other (people blocking #dems or #gop). It could become like a Black Mirror episode where people literally do not know what's happening outside of their group/tribe because they've blocked entire groups/topics/nodes. We have this problem today to an extent, but I worry about new platforms that provide more tools for group isolation.

<comment><USER35> > There's two issues I'm concerned about. As you mentioned, one is yanking > retweets because 'it can be used for ill'. I doubt that would make any real > difference in toxic behavior, but would hurt positive commentary more.

> The other concern is the "block posts by tag" (e.g. ban all #politics). This > could cause an even greater problem where it allow stronger social bubbles > to form because one side could outright block the other (people blocking > #dems or #gop). It could become like a Black Mirror episode where people > literally do not know what's happening outside of their group/tribe because > they've blocked entire groups/topics/nodes. We have this problem today to an > extent, but I worry about new platforms that provide more tools for group > isolation.

In that case, couldn't the opposing side just use the other tag? Who could enforce proper tagging in this case?

<comment><USER34> That's a fair point, but I'm thinking of this more in principle. Is it a good direction for platforms to reduce toxic behavior by imposing more communication limitations and providing topic/group isolation systems?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Who names these things - cumbersome, heavy, ancient ... doesn't look like they did even a cursory test.

I'm as anti-marketing as the next person but that doesn't mean I'd call my child Shithead.

<comment><USER25> I'm a little turned off by posts being called toots but I suppose I could get over it.

<comment><USER15> Not everyone lives in the U.S. and in Europe toot is not offensive, it just means the sound an elephant makes with its trunk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What Mastodon badly needs is a desktop client as good as Twitterrific that can crosspost to both Twitter and a Mastodon instance to lower the barrier to slowly switching. Something like Pidgin/Adium is for IM.

That way people can default to Mastodon where possible and fallback to Twitter where necessary.

<comment><USER38> I use this service: [https://crossposter.masto.donte.com.br/](https://crossposter.masto.donte.com.br/)

It posts your posts from one to the other, so I can use them interchangeably. I definitely prefer Mastodon, although I was never a big Twitter user.

<comment><USER39> > " _Due to an issue with Twitter, posting from Mastodon to Twitter is > temporarily disabled. For more information check out this thread._ > [https://masto.donte.com.br/@crossposter/100479477531222745](https://masto.donte.com.br/@crossposter/100479477531222745) > "

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I think it's a lousy article with a poor title. It's poorly written. It leads with the wrong info. It's framing sucks.

But just as I was thinking "The fact that Twitter is a business is a feature, not a bug" they mentioned they are funded by Patreon. So, they are a business, and one that possibly has a more sustainable business model than Twitter. They just don't call themselves a business for some reason.

I've done a lot of volunteer work over the years. Volunteers tend to be unreliable because they aren't being paid. They are often bitter people because they aren't being paid, so they want you to damn well be grateful as all hell that they do this out of the goodness of their hearts. Etc.

So, I'm less of a fan of open source than I used to be. If you want to do a thing sustainably, creating a business you are passionate about that can also pay your bills makes more sense than doing it for free. Getting the incentives right matters. Doing it for free means either you are independently wealthy, you are a bored homemaker or you actually do something full-time to pay your bills and this gets what little time and energy you have left over.

Maybe I need to look up the info on the guy who said he would answer my questions patiently if I had any and make "trying Mastodon" my new hobby for a bit.

</comment><comment><USER41> I am interested in joining a Mastodon instance but I don't know how to find the right one to join.

Every pro-Mastodon article mentions I can pack my bags and leave for a new instance but if you do research you find that that feature isn't built yet and the community can't agree on how it should work. So picking the right server is currently a very heavy decision.

I've tried some of these instance finder tools but they reveal that Mastodon instances are like 25% furry communities and other fringe fetishes and I really just want a place to talk tech, philosophy, and video games.

<comment><USER42> There are many, many out there. I suggest you join one with a deliberately "throw away" account and start following a few people. Then see where they are, and after a time export the list of people you follow, and move.

I'm on [https://mathstodon.xyz/](https://mathstodon.xyz/) and [https://fosstodon.org/](https://fosstodon.org/) if you want to start on either of those.

Then again, maybe you will neither need nor want to move.

A quick web search for "mastodon instance tech video games" has produces a few pages listing some instances with comments about what sorts of things they cover:

[https://thefishcrow.com/2017/04/08/mastodon-instance- content...](https://thefishcrow.com/2017/04/08/mastodon-instance-content- list/)

[https://instances.noct.zone/](https://instances.noct.zone/)

Visit one of those pages and Ctrl-F for the things you're interested in. Again, a couple of minutes searching has suggested [https://elekk.xyz/about](https://elekk.xyz/about) and [https://mastodon.gamedev.place/about](https://mastodon.gamedev.place/about)

<comment><USER43> Anybody knows of a free speech Mastodon instance? Something that's not banned from the rest of the network, of course. :/

<comment><USER44> I spent an hour looking and gave up. They all either get banned, don't take registrations, or they ban content too aggressively, especially under categories like racism/sexism/xenophobia/nationalism/socialism/etc, wherein the SJWs leave the terms undefined so that they can ban any opinion they disagree with. I'd love to find a server that is committed to the Chicago Principles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> > Well, Mastodon doesn't have retweets; it has "boosts". Boosts are > essentially like retweets, with one key difference: there's no option to add > your own commentary.

I disagree. Retweets can be an issue but they have their place as well

What _all_ "timeline" social networks are missing is the underboost, the downvote button, call it as you want.

People will boost good stuff but they will boost crap.

Networks need the contrary signal, they need the "WTF are you thinking posting this crap here" signal.

Not censorship, but a "tone down" indication.

Twitter has been cutting down and restricting/banning accounts which I'm not fundamentally against it but they are focusing on _one_ side of the political spectrum. With that, I can't agree.

<comment><USER46> The downvote is to ignore it. People will still boost crap but even with a small amount of users anything will quickly get buried in the timeline.

<comment><USER45> Ignoring is ok, but not as good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> This is about as useful to countering toxicity as, say, not supporting avatars and claiming your experience is superior to Twitter because no one can upload a swastika.

To start, the author doesn't get the terminology right: A retweet on Twitter is the un-commented repost to which Mastodon's "boost" is analogous, whereas a "quote tweet" is the thing Mastodon doesn't have native support for. Twitter didn't natively support quoting either until comparatively recently in its history, and there was plenty of toxicity on the platform before then.

Before native quote-tweet support, you would just see a URL to the tweet someone was commenting on, and you'd have to click to view it rather than seeing it expanded inline, which is no less possible on Mastodon. And since this is really up to the client anyway, there's no reason a Mastodon client couldn't auto-expand quoted "toots," nullifying this supposed advantage.

</comment><comment><USER48> I love Mastodon but the only thing stopping me from using it is the way they approach federation [0].

The "ideal" for me is to make an account on a centralized official Mastodon instance (with Keybase verification, if needed) and then be able to seamlessly join another instance without having to sign up for that instance separately to be a member -- and thus not having to make a per-instance account.

That way my account is created once, and I can jump between other instances OAuth-style.

I do like the fact that niche instances exist, but in my opinion it's better to be known as [firstname.lastname@example.com] even when being a member of [@niche.social] much like how Disqus or Gravatar works, in principle. At least the option would be nice.

[0] [https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Using...](https://github.com/tootsuite/documentation/blob/master/Using- Mastodon/FAQ.md#federation)

</comment><comment><USER49> We should remember that the retweet feature was originally created by the community, like, years before twitter implemented it officially. You'll compose a tweet with the format "RT @username <quote post>" and broadcast it to all your followers. There's no reason mastodon users can't do the same. Right?

<comment><USER50> Slightly off-topic but important mention about the RT feature. RT was definitely not the first "feature" and there were many other ones which existed. There were some factors that led to the adoption of the RT convention [0].

> The inventors of these variations were not the typical user. They posted > more tweets, had higher network degree, and were more likely to describe > themselves with words like "geek" and "founder"; in other words, they were > the core members of the Twitter community. The early adopters were also more > active and innovative. The variations spread through densely connected > networks, bouncing from person to person in a way that meant most adopters > of the varia- tion were fewer than two hops from someone who had never been > exposed to the variation on Twitter when they first used it. This could be a > general finding, that social conventions are more likely to arise in the > active and densely connected parts of a community.

[0] [https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM12/paper/view/...](https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM12/paper/view/4661/4983)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Isn't the concept of local servers making it easier to create a bunch of echo chambers?

I haven't even tried Mastodon because my understanding of identify is tied to a server rather than an email or a gpg key... so outside of your control (unless you run your own server). My understanding is that when the server you are currently using disappear, your current identity, history, etc... disappear too.

<comment><USER52> You can export most of your data and move to another instance. It's not the most elegant process, but it seems to work out fine in the long run. You just tell people where you went.

<comment><USER51> It's well beyond not being elegant:

Exports are fine for when you want to move, but typically too late when the server you use and its data disappear. Do Mastodon evangelists advertise the fact that you need to do frequent export?

I follow a lot of people on twitter because I came across one of their tweet, check their history, and found them interesting. They have no idea who I am, they don't post often enough that I could remember their names. If their data and metadata were to disappear, how could they know how to contact me to let me know they have changed server, and therefore identity? Even if I remembered them and did noticed they had disappeared (two huge assumptions), how could I find them on their new server?

<comment><USER52> In practice I think most people just don't care if ancient posts are lost. They aren't exactly the cultural cornerstones of the internet. This isn't a problem often enough that your history is going to be empty most of the time. I think I only know of one occasion where an instance with ~20 users shut down with little warning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Could anyone share their thoughts about the attractiveness of a platform that says how many characters long your posts can be?

What I see on Twitter is that people are constantly fighting this limitation by writing several tweets in a row (sometimes marking them as parts of a whole message). I would think that's an annoyance. So what's the attraction?

<comment><USER12> It's not mentioned but it depends on the instance how long the character limit is (as in, it's configurable). default is 500, but there's some with a limit of 5000, or 666 (some witchy instance iirc)

<comment><USER54> Probably witches.town, which was intentionally destroyed by its owner and no longer exists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Uuuuuh mastadon people, you know "toot" means "fart" for a lot of people, right? I laughed pretty hard reading lines like, "...a middle ground between unfollowing someone and seeing every toot they ever make." Very unfortunate vocabulary choice there.

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm yet another person who's skeptical that this project and its instances will be able to solve any issues that currently plague the more popular, profit-based social media platforms.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it worsens things. Let's take the widely- known phenomena of 'information bubbles' \- where your feeds/networks only serve you information that confirms something you already believe/some worldview you already have.

Not only would a mastadon instance server be prone to attracting users of the same mindset - cross-posting from other sites would be problematic. What if posting on instance A doesn't violate instance A's content guideline terms, but does violate the content guidelines of instance B? Users of B are less likely to see certain content from A. In some ways that's worse than the one- instance for profit networks. As much as I dislike the snarky reply to bad- retweet phenomenon - at least opposing ideas are being discussed there.

Plus, these instances can be run by anyone, and those people can set up any terms they want. Someone like Alex Jones could set up his own mastadon instance, and have his own content guidelines, and wrap his followers in an even 'thicker' information bubble.

</comment><comment><USER57> So instances are like subreddits? Having never used Mastodon I'm not entirely sure I understood what an instance is, but if they are just like subreddits then I'd say that's a way better elevator pitch than trying to define them, and it also helps to show that people do like to congregate on a large platform around topics.

<comment><USER12> Kiiiind of, but there's quite some general instances. Most of them are more like a "here's some people interested in the same subjects as you". So yes, on my (politically motivated, I guess) instance I find quite some people with the same political slant (and some commentary on that), but many cats, daily stories, etc. Just like twitter or other platforms. It's worth a try seeing what joinmastodon.org tells you, and have a look.

<comment><USER57> Now I see. I looked around and it seemed hard to choose 'the right instance' to begin, knowing nothing about the platform. Most had esoteric names, like clubs. It might be a nice idea for Mastodon advocates to create general topic instances, that may feel more approachable for newcomers.

In any case, it does seem like a great platform and might blow up in time with few changes in the onboarding process

<comment><USER12> >It might be a nice idea for Mastodon advocates to create general topic instances, that may feel more approachable for newcomers.

Yeah, the instance names are often quite silly, but there's silly people on there. I mean 3000 variations of "mastodonUKsocial.com" or something wouldn't really tell you all that much more. If you don't want to go to mastodon.social, the biggest english language instance, octodon.social is a good, smaller (~11k users) general instance with a good vibe. Fwiw i think a lot of people use twitter to follow 'their kind of people' (lgbt groups, open source fans, music people) and this codifies those groups a bit more into proper instances/servers/communities, while of course allowing you to follow other people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I hope mastodon could allow @domain.tld "naked" user names.

Much simpler to remember, also connects directly to personal website.

</comment><comment><USER59> > The Why: Twitter Is in the Outrage Business; Mastodon Isn't a Business

This section casting twitter as being in "the outrage business" but mastadon not being a business at all doesn't quite sit right.

Even though mastodon "the open source project" is "not a business", there is an entity behind it accepting $ for it's development[1] and presumably has control over the rules by which the main line development occurs and controls the brand "mastadon" and its website.

I think that section would be more useful and convincing if folks behind mastadon discussed how the money flows in twitter cause it to be in the "outrage business" and how the Mastadon maintainer's money flows solve those problems.

[1] (Gargron - [https://www.patreon.com/mastodon](https://www.patreon.com/mastodon))

(edits: grammar)

</comment><comment><USER60> At the joinmastodon.org site, in order to get me started and in touch with likeminded individuals, it is suggested I define myself as a heterosexual or a white European.

No, wait, the terms are _LGBTQ+_ and _Black American_ , whatever was I thinking?

<comment><USER61> You might like [https://playvicious.social/](https://playvicious.social/). The impression I get from his toots is he's trying to carve out a space where marginalized people, and especially people of color, can just _be_ without having to deal with unsolicited opinions since you can report and expect that someone who understands will deal with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I tried to login, and this error gif gave me a headache. I get it, some error has happened, but this looping speed some sort of triggers me. [https://mastodon.social/oops.gif](https://mastodon.social/oops.gif)

Mastodon needs more designers and a general sense of visual design. If not a keen visual design ethic, then at least a basic sense of "visual obnoxiousness" to avoid.

(Any Mastodoners watching, kindly pass on the message)

</comment><comment><USER63> The lead point is about misuse of quote retweets. I don't disagree that quote retweets can be misused in the way that the article says, but I don't think that's the primary use. And Twitter didn't invent the quote retweet, users did and Twitter adopted it as an official feature. If people really want to use it, they will without official support.

The points about moderation I found much more interesting, and I wish the author had led with that.

</comment><comment><USER64> It sure is!

[https://mastodon.social/@vegai](https://mastodon.social/@vegai) if people want to gather followers together.

</comment><comment><USER65> Being "better than Twitter" is not hard - Twitter is awful on almost any metric you can find. The only redeeming feature is has is that sometimes interesting people post interesting things there. Do they do it on Mastodon? I honestly have no idea - I've never once encountered anybody linking to a post on Mastodon, and I am a voracious consumer of content.

</comment><comment><USER66> > Mastodon Is Better Than Twitter

I sort of agree, it's like Twitter users forming their own groups but it didn't make me like Mastodon. I don't like the name, I don't like the fact I have to sign up for every group, every group has its own layout, which is confusing and I just don't get the whole idea behind it. Sorry, I'll stick to Reddit

<comment><USER15> > I don't like the name, I don't like the fact I have to sign up for every > group

You don not have to do that at all. The point of federation is that you sign up on one instance and can follow and communicate with people on practically every other instance from that single account. Think about how email works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I think that Mastodon has a lot going for it, and indeed It think an open source federated system is a great idea I hope to see succeed, but I don't think that RT is the main problem with Twitter.

Maybe I'm lucky that few pay attention to me, but I haven't had a lot of trouble making Twitter incredibly, if not the most, useful social network. Its easy to find your interests and fairly simple to ignore/block things you don't care about.

I also don't think that "there are people I disagree with also using this space" === "this place is toxic" which seems to be the lazy default these days. I prefer Twitter, being a US company, tread as close as it can to the 1st Amendment. I think that people need to engage with views they are unfamiliar with or misunderstand -- though there's certainly the echo chamber problem, to never face ideas that challenge you is to never grow yourself and understand what you believe as most often reflected in classrooms that now boycott professors or require everything come with some trigger warning.

Twitter has a ways to go to provide tools for dealing with trolls but it's making its way there in a way that seems more methodical and less reactionary than something like FB, and while I find characters like Alex Jones offensive, I find the rush for people (particularly some journalists and 20's something safe-space-mobists that are every bit as vocal as the mobs on the right) to default to the ban hammer more offensive.

These companies have immense power over speech in a way that should frighten us, not encourage us to have the centralization as an excuse to circumvent the 1st amendment. True, no platform is obligated to host someone, but given they are effectively monopolies (extremely responsive to legislator outrage that would otherwise have to fight the 1st) this should give everyone more pause than it appears to.

Jones fell like a domino once Apple removed him first. When Spotify removed the reprehensible music it did, the other companies fell in line and the immediate reaction was for activist groups to demand more and more be removed to varying degrees of things being actually offensive (do we now remove old NWA tracks?)

This is all an incredibly slippery slope, and to me the sign of the times is that the trolls have made it so that any difference of opinion is now something everyone flees from and that the default is to assume the worst of someone who might have a different point of view than you do.

<comment><USER4> "there are people I disagree with also using this space"

Claiming that is what people mean when they claim something is toxic is just as lazy, if not more so. And you're basically saying that it's on minority and underrepresented groups to be the one to engage, rather than those that are antagonizing them.

Alex Jones is an even more egregious case because he's gotten in trouble not just because he "said things people disagree with", but because he sent a harassment mob against the parents of children murdered at Sandy Hook, claiming it was a "false flag operation." Several of them now are not able to visit the graves of their children, the harassment is that bad.

I'm sorry, but I just do not see this as anywhere near the "slippery slope" you're complaining it is.

<comment><USER67> I understand the bad things Jones does, like the doxxing and maybe that is sufficient enough to ban him (and reasonable in that case), but he's just an extreme example for the slippery slope for speech and censorship that IS already here (and which takes almost no imagination to predict where it will ultimately go) [https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1031544806823141376](https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1031544806823141376)

Additionally, I would rather US companies try to favor behavior honoring the Constitution generally, even though they don't have to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> This is way too long for an elevator pitch.

</comment><comment><USER18> What I expect of a "better" Twitter:

\- A timeline that shows what people I follow say, in chronological order

\- no censorship, unless requested and enforced by authorities in _my_ jurisdiction

\- no notifications, no @messages (unless I follow them)

I don't even understand how Mastodon really works or how it's comparable to Twitter. Do people post onto channels? Do I have to join channels to read what they post on those channels?

To me Mastodon just looks like "Twitter with more moderation" and I don't think the average Twitter user cares about that, because they don't partake in mudfights with other users, nor do they care about other users getting into mudfights with one another.

Social Media isn't actually that terrible to use, it just _looks terrible_ when some journalist selects some particularly "outstanding" posts and proclaims the end of civility because of this technology.

<comment><USER69> > I don't even understand ...

It works exactly the same as Twitter, except that not everyone is using Twitter.com. Some are using mastodon.social, some are using some other instance and so on, but you can still follow people on other instances, like you can email people using gmail from a hotmail adress and so on. A username is @username@instance instead of just @username as with Twitter.

<comment><USER18> E-Mail doesn't have moderation (besides Spamfilters). It's unclear to me how this all ties in, if I follow someone and they get banned from their instance, how does it affect me? How does it affect their content?

Not saying there aren't solutions for this, I'm saying it's unclear from just looking at the service and _I don 't care about moderation in the first place_. So it's unclear to me how this is "better".

<comment><USER12> so join an instance with lax moderation. or set up your own.

if you're thinking "that's expensive", look into Pleroma, it can run on a $1 a month server or a raspi. Set something up purely for you, then find some people on other instances you'd like to follow

<comment><USER18> That's not really answering my questions. I understand that different Mastodon instances have different moderation. I _don 't_ understand how that ties into the usage of the service as a Twitter clone.

Who decides how content is relayed? Can I be on multiple instances at the same time? If don't like my instance anymore, can I seamlessly move to another one?

Frankly, I don't even want to _have_ all these questions, it's too complicated. I'll just stick with Twitter.

<comment><USER12> >Who decides how content is relayed?

I mean things are relayed if you ask for them to be. Two cases, pretty much: (1) someone is following someone else, content is asked for by the one server and pushed to the other. (2) You look up a URL (someone's posts, a profile, etc) and it asks the other server for it. Of course you can block certain instances from asking for stuff, or block/mute specific people if you'd like to, so it's not just out there for anyone to grab (except of course that it's the internet, so realistically nothing is ephemeral).

>Can I be on multiple instances at the same time? If don't like my instance anymore, can I seamlessly move to another one?

Of course you can be on multiple instances. Just like you can make multiple emails. Same case though: why would you? some edge cases (being able to see multiple local/home timelines for example, even from people you're not following, via the 'local timeline' tab). So yeah, there's people that have multiple accounts, just like you can have a few reddit or HN accounts if you'd like to. There's definitely usecases, but most people just have the one account. Moving is being worked on, it's not 'seamless' by any means, but you can download a backup of followers etc and upload that to another instance, and have your old account forward to the new one (preventing people from using your old handle, and also meaning that if there's a link somewhere they'd know where you moved to).

>Frankly, I don't even want to have all these questions, it's too complicated. I'll just stick with Twitter.

Do your thing, but I hope you know most people don't necessarily have these questions. If you introduced email or reddit to someone they wouldn't necessarily right away think of data portability, multiple accounts, etc. The onboarding needs a bunch of work, but for basic usage it's really not all that hard.

<comment><USER18> Thanks for the info, I'm still unclear on this (my original question):

If I'm on one instance, and some person is on another instance, if that person gets kicked out of that instance (for a poor joke, let's say), do I lose access to all their messages?

From what I gather by your answer, the answer is "Yes". They need to get another account and I need to follow them on a new one, which may imply _I_ need a new account as well.

Further, if I go for a "free speech" instance, I will run the risk of getting blocked (by proxy) by other instances because of what _other people_ do on that instance.

On Twitter, this isn't such a big problem because people don't get banned that easily, but with all these moderators and "codes of conduct" being emphasized for Mastodon, I think it will be a problem.

> Do your thing, but I hope you know most people don't necessarily have these > questions.

They will have the question of "why do I want this?". One answer to that is "no single corporate entity decides who gets to see what", but from what I understand the whole system is _worse_. All this complication to fight "outrage" and "harassment" which I don't think most people are bothered with in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> >Mastodon lets you or your moderators decide to block entire instances

If your instance operator blocks another instance, are they effectively banning you from following or viewing anyone on the other instance? That would be very stifling.

</comment><comment><USER71> Do they have a search yet, that isn't searching by a hashtag? Twitter wins here by default with proper search and filtering options. How am I supposed to find people talking about something?

</comment><comment><USER72> I guess I don't understand why so much effort is put into these federated social networks rather then starting with a blog and rss perspective to build the same kind of network.

<comment><USER41> I'd like things to go in this direction as well, but with slightly different tech than rss. What you really want is the notification layer of social networks as a standard, so that ppl who follow you are merely alerted that they should visit your site. RSS can be used for this of course, but it's really meant for content syndication rather than as a notification transport layer

<comment><USER73> You're describing ActivityPub, which is a W3C recommendation[0], which happens to be what Mastodon uses. At least one blogging platform is set up to interact with the fediverse[1]. Hopefully many more one day.

[0] [https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/) [1] [https://discuss.write.as/t/activitypub- support/64](https://discuss.write.as/t/activitypub-support/64)

<comment><USER12> Plume is a WIP, and has been discussed here before: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17411173](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17411173)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> I tried the gamedev Mastadon, but it's entirely hobbyists and students.

I want a platform where I can interact with peers. I'll go to where ever that is. But so far Mastadon is not the place.

</comment><comment><USER75> Too bad the Mastodon devs hate SRV records so much. The reliance on WebFinger for federation is the biggest blocker for me deploying an instance on my personal domain.

<comment><USER76> Can you expand more on why WebFinger is the blocker for you? I've been considering running a server lately on my personal domain and didn't even consider SRV vs WebFinger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> Is mastodon a one man show? I was interested but I had doubts when I saw those posts on their discourse about the project governance.

</comment><comment><USER78> If X is better than Y, is stating so necessary?

</comment><comment><USER79> People went to twitter specifically for the outrage. I think the alternative to twitter is nothing.

</comment><comment><USER80> Aside the point a little bit, but I just made a mastadon account today and I've already seen a few dozen female accounts that exist solely to promote their patreon/gofundme accounts. The exact same type of negative atmosphere that plagues snap, IG, and twitter.

</comment><comment><USER81> Let me know when Mastodon can take RSS, Twitter, Reddit, Facebook and etc. feeds as inputs. The platform needs to have a way to import content to bootstrap an instance without having a lot of friends.

<comment><USER36> Isn't that a place for 3rd party services, like IFTTT? Doesn't have to be first party.

<comment><USER81> I don't know, my current experience is that the system lacks content I want to see and there's no easy way to import that. It's just my honest opinion about the system in the current state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> Worse UI and fewer users, can't recommend.

<comment><USER12> >fewer users

that's just a bad point to make? I mean of course a newer platform will have fewer.

UI is a good point (although I prefer it this way). But there's Pinafore[0] or Halcyon[1], or Brutaldon[2] that allow you to change the UI layout if you log in with those.

0: [https://pinafore.social/](https://pinafore.social/) 1: [https://halcyon.toromino.de/login](https://halcyon.toromino.de/login) 2: [https://brutaldon.online/about](https://brutaldon.online/about)

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> I'm just never joining a social network that requires me to "toot". Sorry.

</comment><comment><USER84> I also enjoy micro.blog

</comment><comment><USER85> > As a result, Mastodon users basically never boost toots to say how wrong > they are, and there isn't an issue with armies of followers descending on > the original author.

Because Mastodon is full of like-thinking people, and the ones they'd strongly disagree with aren't joining.

This isn't a bad thing (it's the "local" point this post makes), but it's important to emphasize this as the primary factor responsible for people being nicer, above any design decisions the author is complimenting. Keeping people civil is easy when there are ten thousand times fewer and they all voted socialist.

I checked the mastodon.social local timeline and fewer than 1% of posts were tagged, so I don't see how that's going to make a big difference to my experience.

> Twitter is a public company, funded by investor money; they thus owe a legal > duty to make as much money for their investors as they can.

False. This isn't a legal obligation, it's what the investors want because they're toxic scum.

<comment><USER12> >Because Mastodon is full of like-thinking people, and the ones they'd strongly disagree with aren't joining.

or they're on other instances. there's some far-right political instances, for example (that the leftist crowd of the larger majority of early adopters don't really talk to, although they _could_ in most cases)

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> I was expecting a post trying to convince me to care about federated servers for my social media, but it made some decent points.

I really like the "Boost" approach to the retweet-with-snark problem. And I like to see Mastodon addressing Twitter's outrage-as-a-business problem.

</comment><comment><USER87> If Mastodon wants to be successful, it might be beneficial to try to get some luminaries on board, i.e. the 1% that the rest follow. Unfortunately, they are in the conflict business as well.

Another option would be to consider dropping out of the concept altogether.

</comment><comment><USER88> What I find amusing about all these "solutions" to "online outrage" is that they are invariably made by comfortable centrists, with a smattering of libertarians. I can say this with some authority as both of these terms would have aptly described myself, before I lost my career, my home, and everything else in gender transition, and ended up working three minimum wage jobs instead of coding for 2 years.

Let me tell you where the outrage is coming from. It's not coming from UX decisions. It's coming from mind boggling suffering. It's coming from exhausted and starving bodies who are disrespected and discarded, repeatedly. It's coming from a lack of opportunity and a lack of services necessary for survival. It's coming from a parlous minimum wage and no safety net. It's coming from addiction and the homelessness and precariousness that so often drive it.

Those prone to conservatism interpret their pain as an attack on them from people who look different. Those prone, like myself, to systems level thinking about social structures view it (correctly) as an induced state, effectively selected for because the alternative was selected against.

The pain and outrage leaks onto social media, but it is not from there.

It is all around you, and it is nearly big enough to blot out the sun.

Get ready.

<comment><USER7> I can get behind or at least validate the concerns of everything here except "…bodies who…"

If this language aims to show the blunt physical way that _others_ dehumanize the people in question… well, that's not clear. Maybe exploitive actors see others as just "bodies", but that's not a _good_ way to see people.

The concept of a "person" is bigger than just their physical body, in the same way that this sentence is bigger than just a bunch of binary numbers.

If you want to highlight the dehumanizing, objectifying way that power sees people, it would be "…bodies that…"

Using "who" makes it seem like you think you can refer to people as "bodies" in a way that is non-objectifying…

<comment><USER88> I used 'bodies' specifically, because that is what we, the precariat, are to the systems that govern our lives.

We are warm bodies. Useful for interfacing with other warm bodies. When those bodies cool, they are discarded.

Yes, it really is like this. If you doubt me, by all means, come check it out.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for clarifying. So, if you are writing from the perspective of the dehumanizing system that sees the precariat as mere "bodies", then it is "bodies that…" not "bodies who…"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> If you told me this in an elevator, I would think you're one of those online people who cares a lot about your online presence and has big arguments about social networks.

Also, let me be honest, the language in the article is the sort used by people who have arguments about whether lolicon should be legal or not. This is not something I'm interested in talking about. Just like voat.co and friends this is a fringe-people network. No thanks. I don't want 99% of my conversations to be about furries.

Consequently I would ignore you.</comment>


Practical Cryptography With Go - <AUTHOR> https://leanpub.com/gocrypto <comment><USER2> I am not a fan of this book. I wrote a review of the book as an HN comment. I dislike this book so much that for the first time in the history of my use of HN, my comment overflowed the bounds for HN comments. So, here it is:

[http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=NXgU30xK](http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=NXgU30xK)

(as a Github gist:

[https://gist.githubusercontent.com/anonymous/3cc34251e501c2c...](https://gist.githubusercontent.com/anonymous/3cc34251e501c2c8ffb7/raw/cf9ff4e7ce13985458b240980e91202ac732b4e6/Practical+Cryptography+in+Go+))

<comment><USER3> thanks. but why has crypto to be equivalent to "heart surgery"? if I would describe the state of the art of Internet security I wouldn't apply that term.

<comment><USER2> The point isn't about life and death so much as it is about the likelihood of success for someone just starting out with only a book as a guide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know Kyle personally. He is super smart, incredibly humble, and willing to teach. And I always admire anyone taking the initiative to try and produce something useful.

In response to Jabbles, this is from his (work in progress) book. Page 7.

      // Implement the standard padding scheme for block ciphers. This
      // scheme uses 0x80 as the first non-NULL padding byte, and 0x00 to
      // pad out the data to a multiple of the block length as required.
      // If the message is a multiple of the block size, add a full block
      // of padding. Note that the message is copied, and the original
      // isn't touched.

As anyone who has written technical material knows, your drafts tend to be error prone and you rely heavily on others to help catch your mistakes. Technical editors are the normal tool utilized by the traditional publishing world. As this is a leanpub book, I feel that the responsibility generally falls on the community. Those who have paid for the book and want to see it succeed.

I personally have purchased this book as well as reported errors to Kyle.

I'd encourage anyone with questions or comments to reach out to Kyle. He is quick to respond.

[http://www.kyleisom.net](http://www.kyleisom.net)

</comment><comment><USER5> I can't comment on the author's cryptographic knowledge, but his Go seems non- idiomatic, and in some cases plain weird.

For example, this function stores the length of a slice in a variable, creates a new slice of the same length, copies all the bytes from the old to the new, then checks that the length of the new one is the same as the old (stored variable) - since it cannot have changed this check never fails. Hardly inspires confidence.

[https://github.com/kisom/gocrypto/blob/master/chapter2/chat/...](https://github.com/kisom/gocrypto/blob/master/chapter2/chat/crypto.go#L43)

<comment><USER2> Is that a chat protocol using unauthenticated AES?

Is this an example of what _not_ to do?

<comment><USER6> It comes on to authenticated encryption later.

[https://github.com/kisom/gocrypto/blob/master/chapter5/auths...](https://github.com/kisom/gocrypto/blob/master/chapter5/authsym/authsym.go#L99)

This is the authenticate-then-decrypt-anyway pattern. 100% Vaudenay compliant.

<comment><USER2> That is _not_ "100% Vaudenay compliant".

It happens that in this library, with padding errors delivered as error return values, checking a MAC and then obliviously decrypting won't leak the broken pad values --- presuming your code (a) uses the author's idiosyncratic 80h+00h padding scheme, or (b) uses PKCS7 padding like every other system _and_ carefully checks to make sure that the pad bytes don't run it off the end of a slice --- doesn't fatally compromise the security of the system.

But in virtually every other language in which people implement cryptography, the pattern the author uses snatches defeat from the jaws of victory by creating the opportunity for padding exceptions even after the code has verified for itself that the message it's decrypting can't possibly be valid.

Obviously, the bigger problem is that you're more than halfway through the book before you find out that the example from Chapter 2 is totally hosed.

<comment><USER6> You're right, and it's by-the-by; I missed that decrypt() had moved on to CTR in that code.

If it had been CBC with ISO7816 or PKCS#5 padding then I do think this would be attackable. The unpadding errors from decrypt trump the MAC error thanks to the "err == nil && !match" expression.

<comment><USER2> Fortunately, it's not giving a distinctive error, and always runs both the MAC and the decryption so timing won't distinguish, either. The big problem with this pattern is how disastrous it is in every other language (coupled with the lack of any rationale for decrypting on MAC failure).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Books like this scare the hell out of me. People can't even seem to use tried- and-true crypto libraries without screwing something up most of the time. Now you want them to write their own? This sounds like an absolute disaster waiting to happen.

<comment><USER8> So where do expert cryptographers come from if they aren't allowed to start and write their own stuff at some point?

They start as complete masters of the field in their teenage years?

<comment><USER2> They start by learning to break other systems. That's not my suggestion; it's from a well-known cryptographer people on HN seem to like a lot.

<comment><USER8> Hmm? This sounds like its describing a hacker ("cracker"), not a cryptographer.

One could know all about buffer overflows, memory layout arcana and whatever, but not actually now much about cryptography, primes, et al.

<comment><USER9> Breaking crypto systems isn't the same as breaking "into" systems.

The history of cryptography can basically be described as a series of assumptions which turn out to be invalid. This is either because they were never valid to begin with (and it just took time for problems to be discovered and shaken out), or because the facts on the ground change, making them invalid.

I'm not a cryptographer. I also don't really call myself a hacker anymore (because the loaded assumptions around that word make it useless as a descriptor, you wind up having to explain it in so much detail that it's just easier to start out with a different word), but I do know some cryptographers. They have all described the process in a similar way, which is you start by learning about the pitfalls of everything that's come before you.

Much like if you were learning to build bridges, you'd spend time learning about past bridges that didn't hold up.

So you start with the oldest crypto systems, and learn why those fell out of fashion. One nice benefit to this approach is that it makes it fairly apparent how brittle these constructions are. I don't think I've ever met a cryptographer who isn't suitably hesitant about designing cryptographic systems. Also, a good portion of the time spent as a cryptographer (maybe most of it? I'd love to hear a dissenting view from an actual cryptographer), is in breaking cryptographic systems (initially other people's, and than later, your own).

Cryptography isn't like web frameworks in the sense that everyone is making their own. New crypto systems (at least ones that come from cryptographers) don't spring up out of the ether every week.

One problem that seems to come up in cryptography is that cryptographers themselves "seem" to be mostly only concerned with the primitives. They leave implementation as "an exercise to the reader". This is a problem because I'd say that the overwhelming majority of actual security problems that stem from cryptography aren't problems with the primitives. They're problems with the construction necessary to do anything useful with those primitives. That's why when people heed advice like "Use AES" they're probably screwed.

<comment><USER10> You're pretty much on point. When designing a scheme, whether a low-level cipher or a higher-level protocol, only a small fraction of the time is spent on the initial design itself. That is not to say that a scheme is designed and promptly finalized; analysis results feed back into the design process, of course. But the analysis is generally by far the most time-consuming task.

Additionally, sane people do not use building blocks that they don't trust. If you need a block cipher you use AES (which is partially backed by security proofs) instead of designing your own (unless you have very specific requirements). This saves immense time in both design and analysis. Same with modes (Feistel structure, Sponges, HMAC, etc). Proofs play a big role here, although it is important to understand what they say, instead of blindingly assume they mean whatever you use them for is secure.

You are right that implementation is generally left as an afterthought. This is slowly changing, and primitives are increasingly being designed for implementation and side-channel friendliness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Anyone can comment if this Free to read online but paid PDF/EPUB download model works?</comment>


BetterExplained - <AUTHOR> http://betterexplained.com/ <comment><USER2> "I want to share hard-won "a ha!" moments in clear and simple language."

I looked at a couple of articles and they seem to achieve this pretty well. [http://betterexplained.com/articles/understanding-quakes- fas...](http://betterexplained.com/articles/understanding-quakes-fast-inverse- square-root/) is a great explanation (previously discussed: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=419166>) - it omits some detail to better convey the key ideas.

This one's going in my RSS reader.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like it, too. First time I got an easy explanation for the Monte Hall problem. Bookmarked.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hi all, this is Kalid from BetterExplained -- thanks for the submission! Hacker News has been a favorite source of article discussions for me :).

I'm hoping to crank up the posting frequency, topic suggestions are more than welcome.

</comment><comment><USER5> Bookmarked. Keep writing.

</comment><comment><USER6> Where's the story?</comment>


Monitoring your bloat in Postgres - <AUTHOR> https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2017/10/20/monitoring-your-bloat-in-postgres/ <comment><USER2> What if you can't accept a lock for the duration of a vacuum full? Can the auto vacuum achieve the same thing?

<comment><USER3> [http://reorg.github.io/pg_repack/](http://reorg.github.io/pg_repack/)</comment></comment>


Startups Court Dev Bootcamp's Ruby Grads, 88% Have Offers At Average Of $79K - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/10/dev-boot-camp-is-a-ruby-success/ <comment><USER2> As an incoming student for the next round, who just quit his mech engineering job to do this, I can't tell you how nervous I was about signing up a few months back. Before I decided to take the plunge, I talked to Shereef, audited the class, emailed then-current students, and followed their blogs, and I can tell you it quickly became obvious this was going to be very successful.

With less than month before the next cohort begins, the incoming students are already prepping themselves, going to study groups, going to meetups together if they're in the area, asking questions through a facebook group. And the mentors are already helping in any way they can. I love learning but the level of camaraderie and community I feel truly gets me excited for my 10 weeks there. This is teaching done right.

<comment><USER3> As a fellow incoming student, I couldn't agree more!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are couple of inaccuracies in this article:

First, I only had 200 applicants, and they were all a result of this post about 6 months ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3267133>

Second, the article seems to give me and dev bootcamp all the credit. In truth, the spring cohort was a collection of some INCREDIBLY motivated people. I had all these ideas about how I was going to keep people motivated, and by day 3 it was clear that I wouldn't need any of them. Instead, I started worrying about how I can get them to go home and get some sleep every now and then.

I am committed to making any and all of our numbers public. Ask me anything and you'll get the straight facts (as long as it doesn't violate any of my students' privacy).

<comment><USER5> This is a great achievement. I'm interested to know why you didn't just accept anyone who was willing to pay the fee, as some other training institutions do. Was it limited to 20 due to your teaching resources on hand?

<comment><USER6> Not speaking for Shereef...but, he mentions that the spring cohort was incredibly motivated. Accepting anyone willing to pay the fee would really take away from the power of the program. I don't know if that was Shereef's plan, but the spring class motivated themselves and each other. It was an infectious environment to be around others who were determined to bang their head against the wall until they broke through. If the class was not pre- filtered for these qualities - it would have been a very different atmosphere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Holy crap. 10 weeks. $80K. This is the holy grail, and these guys are doing it: taking someone who has no programming experience and getting them jobs, completely sidestepping accreditation.

Nice work Shereef.

<comment><USER8> Probably more relevant material taught (well) than in my 4-going-on-6 year education right now, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's some important points missing from the '88% have offers' title... \- 400 people applied for the course. \- 20 were accepted into the course, after interviews and screening. \- 17 were "ready to work at the end". (does this mean passed?) \- 14 got job offers.

So the prospective employers can be fairly certain after all of this that the student can code, and that's what makes it so attractive to them. For the student, I'd imagine just making it into the course itself is quite hard but if you do get in then you've got a good chance of success.

<comment><USER9> Admission wasn't granted on the basis of programming knowledge though, it was on the basis of motivation. Yeah that skews the playing field a little bit, but I like that kind of skew. "17 ready to work" means 17 wanted jobs and didn't want to start their own thing.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, and the screening of admissions is obviously working well for them. I did a free online course with Coursera recently and was surprised that only something like 5% saw it through to completion, after hearing that 100k had signed up for it.

<comment><USER9> I think that's because learning is all about being in a conducive environment. DBC got the environment part right. Online courses might be structured really well and have the best material, but they still can't provide you 20 people who've put their livelihoods on the line to get through this stuff right beside you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> First off, and I'm not going to just pick on DB since most of these high-price training operations do the same thing, but this makes it seem like they went down to market street and picked 20 homeless guys then got them jobs at 80k/year in 10 weeks.

No, they had 400 applicants, chose the 20 (5%) that could most likely succeed, and then 17 of those got jobs. This is great, but they should stop making it seem like they're training total newbies with no ability in 10 weeks. They're training people who could probably succeed despite any of the training methods. For example, there's a commenter in this thread who has a mechanical engineering degree. Chances are anyone with a mechanical engineering degree with the money could pass nearly any kind of course.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure where the 400 number is coming from. It's actually closer to 200 ("Of the approximately 200 applications that Dev Bootcamp received for its first session, 20 were chosen to participate in the program").

This cohort was also 8 weeks.

But yes, you're right. These are highly dedicated people. Many came straight out of college, one (myself) came straight out of high school. But I wouldn't go and assume that all 20 of us were mechanical engineering grads. All just highly motivated people.

<comment><USER11> 1, however, did hold a mechanical engineering degree (me).

But I still haven't gotten job offers yet.

(For those in the program who think I told them otherwise: that was not a job offer, but an invitation to a two week assessment with a tiny stipend in a place far from San Francisco, but was still probably counted in the "got jobs" figures.)

<comment><USER12> We're actually not counting you towards the total. Here's hoping your assessment goes well, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I can't see how any of this can really be all that good. Sure they might be able to whip up a quick ruby script and write some OOP code. Is that all the value a programmer is? I think not. Higher education teaches you about how computers work. I've taken classes on the fundamentals of computers, from the lowest level (transistors) to writing programs in machine language, assembly & C. I understand how using a set of logically complete instructions, I can build ANY computer system. From there I understand how C, and C++ works and I've gotten massive dose of Java, OOP, Polymorphism, inheritance, abstraction, recursion, memory management, heaps, stack, memory allocation, algorithms, analysis of algorithms, and not to mention 2.5 years of continual programming experience both through academic work and internships. Next semester I'll be learning about Mobile application development, more on C++, Operating Systems, threading and multicore application development. Just a small snapshot of what it takes to become a great programmer.

These "code schools" are great for one thing. Wasting money. These classes cannot replace the rigor of my education; especially when working 25 hours a week and going to school full-time, taking classes that require minimum 15 hours each of homework outside of class. Soon these companies will see how they have wasted money on recruiting the top "code monkeys" instead of recruiting real Computer Scientists. #end rant

<comment><USER5> You have to look at the outcomes though - these guys now have jobs and will be working alongside people who studied for 3+ years to get to the same place ... that's fairly incredible. I don't want to demean a degree in any way (I have one in CS myself), but in the end how many CS grads end up programming in just a couple of languages in one or two platforms during their first job? - most.

<comment><USER13> But the value of the education isn't just the job you get at the end. These are Ruby job's we're talking about. That's really not that incredible considering quite a large number of people in our fields don't have degrees. The value of a CS degree will pay off far from the first job you get.

<comment><USER14> Not everyone is looking to become a computer scientist. Some people just want to make things. Musicians don't need to know every little detail about how their instruments are made. Painters don't need to know the process by which canvas is produced. Why should beginner programmers need to know everything that underlies their craft?

<comment><USER13> Because programming is different from painting or music. Programming is a skill that's through understanding of systems and how they work. Sure you can build something small with basics skills, but beyond that you need understanding. It takes knowledge and understanding on why your code is performing slow, knowing how memory works, knowing how activation records get built. Yes you can build basic stuff with these basic skills but to be a truly wonderful and competent programmer you need to understand the system and your responsibilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Part of me hopes this spread to other cities... but I'm wary of for-profit "colleges". As soon as it becomes apparent that there is a market for this type of trade school, the market will be flooded with competing schools that quickly train people to code. Then, each school becomes less unique, and they have fewer employers to connect their grads with. Additionally, the schools themselves expand to accept more students (and make more money), but then the average student aptitude is lowered, and employers learn this, and the whole system implodes. Soon, grads can't get jobs right after their training and instead get stuck with student loans they can't repay.

And then recruiters just return to traditional schools for their first-round of screening.

<comment><USER7> That's why reputation plays such a major role. You can't just create a school and expect people to sign up for it, unless you're doing accreditation which is expensive, and eventually employers will see how poor candidates are from technical interviews and word will spread about those schools.

What DBC is doing is building a brand and a reputation for having really smart people in their program. That's defensible and scalable. There are a lot of high-caliber people being involved with DBC now, it's no longer just Shereef (who is awesome).

<comment><USER15> I guess that makes sense, but the concept is only scalable if they can keep differentiating themselves from the inevitable charlatans that they will be competing with.

<comment><USER4> Scaling is over rated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If this program only selected 10% of the applicants, I am sure that they chose the top 10% that would have succeeded anyways. I would be more impressed if they were less selective in their admissions process.

<comment><USER5> They've said they chose the 10% based upon motivation alone, not existing programming skill, and it seems to have paid off.

<comment><USER12> I think a slight clarification would be in order here: motivation and attitude are huge weighting factors in our selection process, but another important part is that we feel you can learn enough in ten weeks to be able to get a job. This doesn't require any programming skill, and the bulk of our students have little to none, but we definitely look for problem solving ability. Anyone can learn to code, everyone should. Just not everybody can learn it in ten weeks. As we nail down the curriculum and improve our teaching we'll probably take on more challenging students, and move closer to the goal of assessing students based on attitude alone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think the key for a new, disruptive education model will be hiring endorsements from large companies. This seems like a good start.

<comment><USER5> I agree that the new online courses being offered by udacity and coursera etc have potential to be disruptive, but I don't see anything disruptive in this case to be honest ... the "intensive, job oriented training" model has been done before. But this one seems to have a founder who obviously has the industry connections to setup the students with jobs at the end.

<comment><USER11> I don't think he ever used the connections to actually get students jobs/interviews though, even when asked. He just used them to get employers to show up and talk to us, and show up for a five minute "speed dating" session with us (though I guess you could count that).

<comment><USER18> I would count that. I've never had an interview that didn't lead to a job offer. As soon as I can talk to the people who matter (as opposed to HR gatekeepers), I can demonstrate that I'm the person they want for a job. On the other hand, when I'm applying through HR, even for jobs that I know I would be a perfect fit in, I get a response well under 5% of the time.

<comment><USER11> Well, the people at the speed dating thing were generally recruiters closer to the HR end of things, so ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Isn't $79k somewhat offensive for a software engineer? At a time when new college grads are making well over $150k their first year?

<comment><USER9> Seriously? Entry level devs make $150k?

<comment><USER19> Yes, ask any Facebook/Google new grad. Standard offer is $100k base salary + $15k bonus + $30k stock a year + $XXk signing bonus.

<comment><USER9> Median entry level salary for SOMA area is around $68k. Not sure if comparing to the Facebook/Google entry level is the best comparison to draw.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's the old adage? Oh yeah, the numbers speak for themselves.</comment>