Joseph KaminskiNot really understanding Mastodon at this point. It claimed to be anti-harassment, yet I've seen some horrifying messages about McCain and his family since he died. It claimed to be an alternative to Twitter, yet every damn message I see on the timelines say "birdsite" (why mention what you're supposedly trying to get away from?). I really don't see purpose of the site if its foundation is compromised/contradicted by its general users. @Gargron
@Gargron The Wil Wheaton drama coupled with the hoards of John McCain "shitposting" (honestly some of the rudest messages I've ever seen on social media) really turned me off from the so-called good qualities this website offered. Corporatized Twitter sucks, but mob-fueled digitized verbal lynching is not a proper or coherent rival. Maybe social media in general needs revitalization and not half-hearted attempts at becoming the "next big thing" in the short attention span of the internet.
@Gargron To summarize, the site has evolved from a good-natured alternative into a "you're either with us or fuck you" social club that seems to exist solely to make fun of those who don't agree, constantly bring up "the problems" with "birdsite", and circlejerk pointless information for the rip-off "toots" that rarely exist as the site is split off into different sub-communities that do not seem to interact - yet all serve the same purpose.
@Gargron Also - basic sociology - when too many categories are created, those categories become worthless. The overuse of content warnings on this site break the overall flow of the timelines and creates a terrible situation where "if everything is content warning'd, then nothing is content warning'd at all."
Eugen Rochko@josephkaminski I'm not sure why you're tagging me personally like I am in control of every single being on this platform, but all of your complaints are solved by following different people. Just find yourself people who love McCain and hate content warnings. Probably on a less left-leaning server than mine.
@Gargron and there doesn't need to be a political divide between the McCain thing. I don't like him either, but the general consensus here was more toxic and hateful than any other platform I'm on. That's the problem, not the "following" concern. I apologize if I'm coming off as hateful, but criticism is important.
A Tray of Bees@josephkaminski @Gargron mastodon.social (m.soc) happens to also be where people who got account suspensions on Twitter and are fed up for that particular reason wind up--because it's the top hit on Google. So invariably you'll discover that includes a fair share of shitposters. It's not reflective of m.soc's userbase--it's just that shitposters tend to be loud and annoying and post frequently.
@trayofbees Ironically, having a differing complaint/breaking from the hive mind is the most "action" I've seen here in terms of communication. See the apology I just posted to Eugen.
@josephkaminski You can take one of two tracks if you're not a low-effort liberal who is mostly into social media for communism memes and talking about your butthole---avoid poli (because really, nobody ever converts someone's opinion about anything poli on social media), or you find an instance (liberdon? qoto maybe?) where more intellectual discourse is encouraged
@josephkaminski full instance list is at instances.social have a look
@trayofbees Thank you for having a legitimate answer and helpful attitude. At this point I wasn't expecting one.
@josephkaminski There's a debate about instance-only conversations (which isn't possible right now) but would be the equivalent of sever-only channels where the messages don't get federated, so people can self-sort to instances where they feel more at home
@josephkaminski You just cannot have a 20-something far left person with a 40 year old centrist on the same social media feed together and expect that to ever happen and not end in tears, no matter how much both people promise they'll be nice.
@josephkaminski btw your account on any mastodon instance already comes with powerful filtering and domain blocks--you don't need to wait for an admin to use them. You can drop the toots or just hide them (I prefer to always drop them). The toot gets replaced with "filtered" and no buttons to click, so you know the filter's working. We all had to reach for that during the wilw episode
@trayofbees Trust me - I tried the filtering. Every time I added a new one people found a new way to say or spell McCain. McCain turned into McCainposting and then Cainposting and then just nicknames and random words associated with him (ie. Maverick). If I filtered every damn word what would be left? There's none of this word-play association on any other social site I've been apart of.
@josephkaminski Yeah---that's mostly because of bofa shitposters.
That's why bofa was silenced by a bunch of other instances (I added it to mine as well).
@trayofbees I stand firm with saying what I witnessed during the McCain issue was worse here than any other social media site. Any. Even the disgustingly cancerous side of Reddit and 4chan. I don't believe the issue here is political division or dichotomy but rather the general level of hivemindedness that occurred for that specific topic. I've not interacted until now; I am only discussing what I have seen. I "retooted(?)" something about a week ago that really summarizes how I'm feeling.
@josephkaminski Yeah I saw that shit too.
Wait until HRC dies. That will be fun.
people complained about twitter being toxic and I thought we were all on the same page regarding that. however, Just As Expected, what they actually meant by that was not "twitter is toxic", but "twitter is toxic because they're not me"
and now mastodon.social is being made into a "you're either with us or against us" situation being shoved onto our faces when to be honest most of us just really want an escape from real life and not a continuation of it
credit: @victor_season
@trayofbees @victor_season (since I can't for the life of me figure out how to link to another "toot" yet, apparently.)
@josephkaminski part of what Twitter does with timeline grooming is algorithmic separation of users based on political likes (of course this doesn't work when news events occur and everyone swarms on a celeb/news tweet). Mastodon likely will self-segregate if it is to scale.
@josephkaminski The thing with twitter is that it sells data aggro and predictive analytics about you as a person based on your interaction with the platform. On Masto you just post stuff. We already had one instance today do some creep "experiment" and a bunch of instances blocked him for it.
@trayofbees I absolutely dislike the corporatized aspects of Twitter, despite me using it in this conversation as a frame of reference (as this is the supposed alternative). I've written about the sociopolitical echo chamber of modern social media extensively, and I partially blame big dollar bills for that evolution (or de-evolution, I suppose). I do appreciate you continuing to talk to me, though! It seems Eugen doesn't care enough.
@josephkaminski Eugen is in Germany and it's like 7AM there so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@trayofbees his last "toot" was 3 minutes ago. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@josephkaminski i dont think he was sleeping through this evening, since he was tooting all evening for me (and it's 00:36 here)... so he's not fresh as a daisy right now
@trayofbees all is well, just swimming in the sea of thoughts right now. I appreciate the discussion nonetheless. I suppose I'll have to explore the instances page you linked me and give those a shot.
Fellixe@josephkaminski @trayofbees Another good resource is @fedi It's an account that hourly posts basic info about random instances.
I'm new Mastodon but from what I've seen staying in .social is like hanging out at the airport/train station/etc. and watching new arrivals. Interesting mix but eventually I'll find a home.
@josephkaminski try moving your account to liberdon.com and pruning your follow list... CSV exports are in settings, you can re-import them into your other account. See if their TL looks "cleaner"
@trayofbees @[email protected] this description summarizes what I'm seeing atm.
@josephkaminski @seanmunger Instance blocks/filter plus flat out suspending/blocking/muting the shitposting accounts clears out the timeline if you're aggressive enough. Most of that nastiness you were seeing--when you go look at the tooter's TL on their instance page usually you'll find a long stream of shitposting