Social media platforms with very limited post lengths are a major part of the misinformation/disinformation problem. They encourage posting in headlines without context, and exacerbate arguments because anything other than tiny posts (e.g., multiple "threaded" posts when available) are usually too much hassle. Bluesky is no better than X in this respect (worse, if you've fed money to Elon for longer posts, which is unforgivable) and the now utterly stale arguments that short posts are best are now little but dumpster fodder.
#Mastodon will never effectively compete for serious communications for very basic reasons, without major redesigns that are unlikely to ever be forthcoming. While it is possible to increase post lengths by recompiling (mine has a 20K character limit!) #Mastodon developers appear to have steadfastly refused to make this easily configurable by admins so as not to require rebuilds.
Even more catastrophically, the Mastodon reply topology, where any given user cannot be sure they are seeing all replies to any given post, is amateurish beyond measure, and is a stake in the heart of the Fediverse as it currently exists.
That's the reality, like it or not.
Gabriel Adrian Samfira
in reply to Lauren Weinstein • • •C.
in reply to Gabriel Adrian Samfira • • •@jwz has also pointed out a different problem with replies/threads - notably that someone can basically hijack your followers to broadcast their crap (whether that's spam, trolling, or outright abuse) to them, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Their reply will go out to your followers, not just their own.
He thinks - and I agree with him - that the original poster needs to be able to control replies to their posts. Whether that's moderating them, or allowing them to delete obnoxious replies, or something else, I don't know.
Michael Kohne
in reply to C. • • •