this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
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the_dunk_tank
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It's the dunk tank.
This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.
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I don't think he's totally wrong.
With 10 engineers one should be able to set up a Mastodon instance and scale it.
I think the issue comes when you look at all the functionality that is much more nuanced than just the bare technicals.
A good algorithm to maintain high engagement and display relevant content and relevant ads. Moderation to maintain a balance between an environment friendly for advertising without feeling censored.
And all the data analysis and UX testing to achieve that.
Building a Twitter clone is easy. Dominating the niche is hard.
A Mastodon instance is used by, at best, a few hundred to low thousands of people, and is going to be small and relatively obscure
Twitter is used by millions, is the preferred quick communication tool of tens of thousands of companies, and is one of the single biggest presences on the net. It'll take far more than 10 engineers to keep it running when it gets randomly DDOSed for a laugh by some bored teenagers, where a Mastodon instance either wouldn't even be a target or would just accept going down temporarily
Both Gab and Truth Social are Mastodon instances (albeit not federated, though if they ever enabled federation they'd be immediately blocked by a majority of instances due to a combination of anti-corp and anti-right sentiments). Gab was actually the largest Mastodon instance for a good while (unsure about currently) - if you see any Mastodon clients that have negative reviews about not connecting to the largest Mastodon instance, that's what they're referring to (several clients blacklisted Gab at the client level).