Prefer Mastodon posts over Twitter

[erikkfi]

I would prefer to see MacRumors news stories referencing Mastodon and other fediverse sources over the default of Twitter posts, where possible. For instance, this article on the Apple Vision Pro virtual keyboard references a Twitter post from Mark Gurman. The same exact post by Gurman was available for you to refer to on Mastodon. Heck, you can even embed the Mastodon post just as you did the Twitter post. Why not switch? It's a small change but a lot of small changes add up and make a big difference.

 

[Pakaku]

I'd like this, I'm definitely in favour of taking away from Elon's spotlight

 

[icanhazmac]

Gotta love Elon living rent free in your heads! Y'all probably were crapping on Mastodon prior to 10/27/22.

There is no Twitter, only Zuul!

My vote... X is still the dominant platform, so unless there is a better reason than Elon Derangement Syndrome leave it be.

 

[bigjnyc]

Why? most people are on twitter despite the small crowd declaring it's demise. I don't understand how people could be so sensitive and weak minded that they can't separate a whole company and its employees from the ramblings of one man. You would think Elon pillaged and raped a whole village all by himself the way he affects peoples feelings.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Offer links to both platforms.

 

[icanhazmac]

Offer links to both platforms.

Choice is good but remember they will embed in a post so we would have a lot of screen taken up by previews of essentially the same posts.

Example:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1745907431564063208

Mark Gurman (@markgurman@mastodon.social)

The Vision Pro virtual keyboard is a complete write-off at least in 1.0. You have to poke each key one finger at a time like you did before you learned how to type. There is no magical in-air typing. You can also look at a character and pinch. You’ll want a Bluetooth keyboard.

mastodon.social

Edit: Hmm, well the X post didn't "preview" like I thought it would. One could just link them, as done above, but do we really need multiple links to pacify the triggered?

 

[Apple_Robert]

Choice is good but remember they will embed in a post so we would have a lot of screen taken up by previews of essentially the same posts.

Example:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1745907431564063208

Mark Gurman (@markgurman@mastodon.social)

The Vision Pro virtual keyboard is a complete write-off at least in 1.0. You have to poke each key one finger at a time like you did before you learned how to type. There is no magical in-air typing. You can also look at a character and pinch. You’ll want a Bluetooth keyboard.

mastodon.social

Edit: Hmm, well the X post didn't "preview" like I thought it would.

Good point. I didn't consider that aspect.

 

[erikkfi]

It would be silly to link to both. The point of embedding a social media post has nothing to do with choice for your readers. Presumably it’s to easily provide a source and give a little hat tip in case people want to follow them. They can do that on Mastodon in this case.

And just look, the Mastodon embed is far more compact to boot. I’ll bet it has fewer trackers too.

 

[bigjnyc]

It would be silly to link to both. The point of embedding a social media post has nothing to do with choice for your readers. Presumably it’s to easily provide a source and give a little hat tip in case people want to follow them. They can do that on Mastodon in this case.

And just look, the Mastodon embed is far more compact to boot. I’ll bet it has fewer trackers too.

Mastodone has about 2.4 million monthly users... Twitter has about 600 Million monthly users... Why would anyone link mastodone over twitter?

 

[erikkfi]

Mastodone has about 2.4 million monthly users... Twitter has about 600 Million monthly users... Why would anyone link mastodone over twitter?

This isn't MacRumors linking to its own content on Twitter, so I don't see why the number of daily, weekly, or monthly users would factor into the decision of which platform to embed from.

I actually would be interested in hearing from the editorial team how this decision is made and how it might be influenced. Perhaps it's just an automatic sort of thing that hasn't been examined in a while.

 

[icanhazmac]

I actually would be interested in hearing from the editorial team how this decision is made and how it might be influenced.

I am interested in why you feel MR should even consider referencing content from one provider over another? What exactly is driving your request, be specific. What makes the exact same information referenced from Mastodon better than from X?

Maybe MR should cease reporting on Apple products because of the members here who hate Tim Cook?

 

[Altis]

I would prefer to see MacRumors news stories referencing Mastodon and other fediverse sources over the default of Twitter posts, where possible. .... .... Why not switch? It's a small change but a lot of small changes add up and make a big difference.

Odd that you don't provide a reason why, then ask why not. The why not seems obvious given one is orders of magnitude more popular to the point of being an industry standard and no reason to switch to a far less popular one has been provided. Extra work to figure out who has accounts on what platform for no benefit.

You also mention making a "big difference" without saying what kind of difference you're looking to have made.

 

[smirking]

I'm all in on ActivityPub (what Mastodon is based on). I'm steering my own sites that direction because decentralized social media finally offers something I've been after forever. It gives you the opportunity to actually co-own your social media activity instead of all of it feeding someone else's platform.

X may not vanish, but it's never going to be as influential as it once was. It was already on the down slope before Elon bought it. It's only slid faster downhill since.

 

[erikkfi]

Odd that you don't provide a reason why, then ask why not. The why not seems obvious given one is orders of magnitude more popular to the point of being an industry standard and no reason to switch to a far less popular one has been provided. Extra work to figure out who has accounts on what platform for no benefit.

You also mention making a "big difference" without saying what kind of difference you're looking to have made.

I'm not going to dissertate on the way Twitter discourse has declined far past the point of being a societal net negative; if you're genuinely curious, there's a great deal of reporting and research in this area. In any event, there now exists an open, non-corporate alternative, one large enough that MacRumors itself has a presence on it. And it's also one that -- to the best of my knowledge -- doesn't use embeds to track users across sites, and is part of a larger pool of decentralized networks that can defederate from instances that are taken over by problematic kinds of content, even as Twitter sends signals that it may end the ability for users to block other users.

 

[Pakaku]

Gotta love Elon living rent free in your heads! Y'all probably were crapping on Mastodon prior to 10/27/22.

There is no Twitter, only Zuul!

My vote... X is still the dominant platform, so unless there is a better reason than Elon Derangement Syndrome leave it be.

Not sure you should be making "rent-free" accusations, with a defensive response like that, but okay whatever you say. It's not exactly easy to talk about Twitter without acknowledging who is in charge of the site

Twitter has been on a bad downward spiral lately, with things like Elon in charge and pushing his bigoted personal agenda (I say at the risk of more "rent-free" jabs), promoting flame-bait farming in the comments, etc. so an alternative source that isn't so tainted, and is just as public as twitter, would be greatly appreciated over relying on just Twitter alone as a single source

 

[MacNut]

I really gave up on Twitter when the third party apps were killed. It was a much better experience before.

 

[svenmany]

In the OP's example of the Mark Gurman post, the Mastodon link is a far better one. Maybe it's because I'm not logged in (to either). The Mastodon post shows me replies and is pretty clean. The Twitter post has no replies. Also, the Twitter post has a nag at the bottom of the screen to sign up. I also get a popup, after a few seconds, asking me to turn on notifications. The Twitter post is generally invasive with Twitter promotion. It also has tracking that Mastodon doesn't, according to Firefox.

It would add a lot of value to show a Mastodon link rather than a Twitter one. I don't see the downside. In the case in point, Mark Gurman's content is identical.

 

[truthsteve]

"big difference" in what? favoring your position against XYZ?

the majority of the world uses Twitter over Mastodon. it's not Macrumor's job to increase visitors to one social platform.