Hello again. I already have people on Twitter telling me this won't last 2 weeks. I guess they're unaware it has already been around much longer than that. People are stupid. FYI 😛
@sotonohito Yeah, but that's not enough. App.net tried to do that. Then again, no one needs to make money here on this.
@annatarkov @sotonohito I think App.net failed partly because the idea of paying for a social network seemed ludicrous, and mostly because Twitter's problems hadn't gotten so unignorably bad that people were genuinely looking for alternatives.
If app.net launched today—free and with a solidly enforced no-abuse policy—I think it would do very well. People might not abandon Twitter en masse, but they wouldn't dismiss app.net as an inevitable failure, either.
@annatarkov What's the quote... a person can be smart, but people are an easily confused, scared and suggestible mass... I paraphrase terribly.
@StephenReid That's legit true. Sadly.
@StephenReid But plenty of individual people are stupid and ignorant though. I mean, Exhibit A: American politics.
@annatarkov Absolutely, yeah. But the mass is so much more powerful. See: American election. :\
@annatarkov Welll, the question is whether it will be a big thing. Technically Google+ still exists, but no one cares.
I hope Mastodon takes off, but "existence" and "existence as something useful" are two different things.
I think if Mastadon can kill the trolls and bots that can be their selling point and let them push themselves as "like Twitter but without the evil".