Eugen RochkoJan 21, 2019
During the #Eunomia meeting, I was asked, who are the most influential accounts on Mastodon? I know what Mastodon thinks about popularity contests, so don't get me wrong, I am not going to publish what I find, but I am thinking of methodologies for determining who in this network has influence.
Show threadinfinite love ⴳ

@Gargron
classical "engagement" approach:
- boosts
- faves
- followers
- reply rate
aggregated in total, for highest-scoring toot, and also normalized to toot count, or normalized to number of followers. also,
- endorsements

downside is these measures can easily be gamed, but within a margin of error it's the most numerical you can get. works fine if you assume "influence" = "engagement". if not, you'd need to have another proxy for "influence" (which is unmeasurable directly)

Jan 21, 2019 at 11:13pmWeb
Show threadVx. Princess "size_t queen" Grace Jan 21, 2019
@trwnh @Gargron That's the thing, right? As soon as you measure something, that's what people aim for. Whatever number you decide on as a proxy for "influence", it pretty quickly stops measuring influence.
Show threadEugen RochkoJan 21, 2019
@trwnh I don't think gaming any of the stats is a concern when talking about private, one-time research.
Show threadinfinite love ⴳJan 21, 2019
@Gargron perhaps not in context of the study, but it's a variable that has to be considered nonetheless. thankfully mastodon de-emphasizes engagement farming, but it's not immune. surely there exists at least one account trying to maximize its engagement (not necessarily in negative emotional contexts, as twitter is prone to).
Show threadEugen RochkoJan 21, 2019
@trwnh Yes but you don't need to think about the research itself feedback-looping into the metrics, like it would do with live leaderboards.