Tweetbot Creators Launch Ivory for Mac: Well-Designed Mastodon App

Mastodon has the same crappy social media censorship model of other apps with hall monitors waiting for someone to say the wrong thing, so it's dead in the water to me.

Not really? Mastodon itself has no censorship policy, but because it's fully decentralized each server or instance using Mastodon's service sets its own rules. Some are more strict than others.

That said, I generally agree with the sentiment. Twitter "worked" as a platform for conversation because virality and discoverability is built into its genes. Mastodon is the exact opposite. It's HARD to find people unless you actually know them, and that's just not a great way to connect with new people.

But that's okay. Not everything needs to be a Twitter clone, and Mastodon doesn't WANT to be a Twitter clone, so maybe people should stop acting like it is?

Hopefully Mastodon will grow in popularity but I’m not sure if 1.2 million active users counts as particularly popular compared to other sites.

The whole point of an app like twitter is everyone of note is on it. Tweetbot was one of the best apps ever though. RIP. Mastodon has the same crappy social media censorship model of other apps with hall monitors waiting for someone to say the wrong thing, so it's dead in the water to me. Mastodon is a poor man’s twitter with less users for folks with a thin skin or those who wish to live life in an echo chamber.

Update: yes I’m aware how it works with different instances, but already that creates problems and is annoying. Better twitter alternatives to Mastodon exist already: Reddit and Discord. Twitter is much better than all three for getting broad information and divergent opinions. Reddit is ok for having certain focused questions answered, but beyond that I find it has some serious vampire energy going on. It may help if Reddit just got rid of downvotes altogether. It might rectify some of the groupthink on there. With Discord I’m not in love with how it works at all. Twitter also has many features for muting certain words, topics and conversations (which I use to make my experience more pleasant and a bit less political) and not too many ads. Curating your own experience is infinitely better than someone else censoring for your experience.

And unlike YouTube, for example, when you block an account on twitter it stays blocked even in search. YouTube make it impossible to block the most annoying accounts and I’ve sent them feedback many times on this for years but they obviously don’t care about their users because they don’t listen. Blocked should mean 100% blocked, always. No excuses. Twitter definitely isn’t perfect but phones are mostly toxic anyway.

The whole point of an app like twitter is everyone of note is on it, within reason. Tweetbot was one of the best apps ever though. RIP. Mastodon has the same crappy social media censorship model of other apps with hall monitors waiting for someone to say the wrong thing, so it's dead in the water to me.

mastadon does not have any censorship model. Its like a minecraft server anyone can instantiate their own and declare their own moderation rules.

You can set one up just for yourself, and post your thoughts and then censor yourself.

I don't use Mastodon but I just noticed this app doesn't collect any personal data, which is... impressive, to say the least:



Compare this with Twitter 😬:

Hopefully Mastodon will grow in popularity but I’m not sure if 1.2 million active users counts as particularly popular compared to other sites.

Mastodon is a broken Twitter with Reddit-tier mods. It's always going to be niche for that.

Some people want that, which is fine. They just need to be realistic about the reach.

Well done! When market opportunity strikes...