Thank you, that’s an important distinction. I hope they can be trusted to live up to that. However it still feels l pretty problematic to bring them in and would be a lot of opting in to debate and implement. It remains a pretty big violation of user privacy and trust and it says here:

As if that weren’t bad enough, preparations for the sale went poorly, and it seems large categories of Tumblr posts that weren’t supposed to be sold were added to the mix anyway. That data includes:

Private posts from public accounts

Posts on deleted or suspended accounts

Unanswered asks

Private answers

Explicit posts

Posts from partner accounts, like ad campaigns where Tumblr doesn't own the rights. (Apple is specifically named here.) 

One advantage over wordpress is that it avoids bringing its parent company, Automatic, into the Fediverse.

From Wikipedia:

In February 2024, Automattic announced that it would begin selling user data from Tumblr and WordPress to Midjourney and OpenAI.

Yeah I’m definitely interested in how it will play out and think it could be great. Interoperability should always be the goal, increasingly so. I’d like to see more of that and Eugen working with the designers of Lemmy, Pixelfed, etc more cooperatively. Yeah it seems like he realizes now is the time to make changes while there’s interest but before the next big leap off of centralized social media.

In a way it’s slightly redundant since each instance is already a “group” though it would be interesting to see how people from various instances can create groups for specific topics and goals. I’m a little leery of luring too many facebook users here too quickly and the impact that will have on moderation and how respectful the culture here remains but it’s ultimately inevitable. The group structure you mentioned sounds interesting though a bit like Discord so who knows if that’s in his thinking too.

Agreed. I think the headline was more to catch the attention of your average social media user but Eugen does mention the way those services tend to fade away so hopefully it’s just a matter of time before more people make the leap.

That’s definitely an important question. The culture on Twitter can be far less respectful than Mastodon so we definitely don’t want that here but the moderation options give users more control when dealing with bad actors so eventually it balances out to some extent.

I got rid of Twitter when Musk took over and brought actual fascists back while getting rid of anti-fascists but I agree you can use different services and expect different things from them. The Fediverse is more inherently built to last and for I feel increasingly more inclined to post on those services, though.

Yeah I’m curious what form the groups will take. There are are group channels now to a small extent but they’re hardly noticleable. It seems like he wants to win over people from facebook next. I’m a little concerned about the impact that will have on the the culture of Mastodon since when the last boost from Twitter happened due to Elon’s takeover, some people brought attitudes you’d expect on Twitter.

I don’t always agree with Eugen’s decisions but it’s interesting to see the Fediverse get more press at least and he did a pretty good job of explaining it to those who are totally new to it.

Yeah I read about the first part but missed about IG blocking links. ( the hashtag pixelfed still works fwiw ) Maybe not a total existential threat as you say which is good but still slows PixelFed down from doing constructive work, which seems to be the point, and given the power imbalance between PixelFed and Instagram / Meta it’s still something to consider, if not be concerned about. The post asked to share for awareness.

You’re right and hopefully it’s Instagram’s existence that feels threatened especially with all the attention Mastodon / The Fediverse is getting right now.

The official Mastodon app sucks for iOS as well, yet I have it on my phone and beta test it. My go to app is Metatext as it’s the most simple to switch between timelines, see hashtages, etc. I’ve also had tooot for a while which is pretty good and I like Mastoot which just went into testflight beta testing. Mammoth is a new one that I’m also testing with Testflight and has some unique features like being able to see local timelines of other instances. Each app has its own unique functionality and interface and I feel like the abundance of them forces each to try harder and be better so it’s definitely not a bad thing to have a unique view of your corner of the Fediverse.

The official apps for Android & iOS are getting ready to be released for Beta testing very soon. I’m not sure but there may be a FOSS third party app out for Android already