So I agree with you that they should work like email -- but I've always said that Mastodon is better because it is like email; aka the power is in the nodes.
What do you think is wrong about Mastodon? Genuinely curious because I also am super skeptical that ATProto brings anything that we really need.
The problem with centralized social media is that the admins have power over you. They can ban your account with no recourse, censor some of your posts (or some posts you want to read), or even post something from your own account that you don't approve of.
Mastodon doesn't change this, it just changes who the admins are. It lets a person under the jurisdiction of admin A interact with a person under the jurisdiction of admin B, which is better than fully-centralized X, but it doesn't solve the fundamental problem. Your instance admin can still ban you with no recourse (account migration is incomplete, requires cooperation on both sides, and mostly exists to shut up Activitypub opponents who point these problems out). They're still just as (if not vulnerable) to government pressure as centralized social media, and considering that a single lawsuit could probably bankrupt most instances, I suspect they'd fold very very quickly. They can (and very often do) defederate from instances that post "too much nazi content", and if you disagree with the decision, there's again no recourse (you can migrate, but you won't get your lost relationships back).
A lot of us are our own instance admins, with our own accounts being the only accounts associated with our domains. I don't self-host though; I pay a dedicated hosting provider to handle this for me. This means I end up having a very similar relationship to my Mastodon provider as to my email- and cloud storage providers.
ActivityPub supports a less compelling user experience for many people: you only have a partial view of the network (you won’t see all the replies to the posts of people you follow on other servers), no global search, etc
The same problems as always. Allow federation and you get...
- federation wars and moderators conducting these wars using their own users as hostages - I left Mastodon years ago when some particularly dumb morons decided to do bitchfights regarding Israel / Palestine. No I'm not interested in your pointless squabble, but I do care when I suddenly don't see posts from a bunch of users without even getting a notification...
- Mastodon-specific, when you move your account from one instance to another (e.g. as response to above-mentioned BS) your followings and followers migrate - but all your posts and media do not
- spam, trolls and griefers abusing the system, up to and including sending around CSAM material that inevitably gets sucked in by your instance, making you liable in the eyes of the law
- security issues. Mastodon has been full of these, no thanks I don't have the time to be constantly on guard lest I be exploited from above-mentioned griefers.
- other instances not giving a flying fuck about moderation or abuse going out from their instances.
What do you think is wrong about Mastodon? Genuinely curious because I also am super skeptical that ATProto brings anything that we really need.