Ryan CordellSo I guess the real question for me over here—& I think the big question for this space, generally—is whether the *only* appeal of Mastodon is its not-Twitter-ness. So far as I can tell, it does most of what Twitter does, though some things are clunkier—& it doesn't do anything Twitter doesn’t do, right? There aren't new paradigms it unlocks, I don't think. & If that's the case, can it survive past the moment when "not Twitter" is what people are looking for?
Mark Sample@ryancordell Scratch the surface, and some fundamental differences show up. The ability of each server to establish its own ethos and moderation policy, for example. The overall culture of content warnings and attention to accessibility strikes a different tone too. The lack of quote posts is a deliberate choice too, designed to discourage people from talking over each other.
Tom ElliottI'd agree with @samplereality. The Federative model and its implementation in ActivityPub and the Mastodon UI and API constitute a significant paradigm shift. That there are fields for CW and choices about visibility from the start are significant, as is the choice to eschew non-temporal weighting in timelines. All this creating a heterarchical environment where heterogeneity, niche interests, variant cultures, etc. can experiment and develop.
Will academic institutions or their components set up their own instances?
Will scholarly communities congregate in instances, as some #histodons have been discussing?
Will easy account transfer from instance to instance allow project-or-discipline-oriented instances to wax and wane with less fallout that abandoned blogs and websites?
Oh, look, there's one now: https://c18.masto.host/@carrideen/109270450287627832
Carrie Shanafelt (@[email protected])
@[email protected] Yes, mastodon.social is really overcrowded! Any #histodons with an interest in the 18th century are welcome on my fast new little instance, c18.masto.host! I found it very easy to set up and not too expensive for a midsized server. Migration instructions: https://c18.masto.host/@carrideen/109263805567073435
JenProf@telliott @samplereality @ryancordell Hmmm, this tendency toward siloing on Mastodon is tough on interdisciplinarians. I must say, I built up a Twitter feed I enjoy, full of academics and non-academics doing interesting things, and I'm staying active over there as well until it burns up.
@telliott On one hand, I like the idea of scholarly communities building their own home/instance. OTOH, I'm wary of joining such an instance and then feeling constrained about what I ought to be posting. I already moved from scholar.social after finding its rules to be too button-downed for me.
@samplereality It's an interesting aspect of the whole thing isn't it? There's several folks in the fediverse who maintain two or more accounts, each with a different emphasis. I just had a follow, for example, from an account that's one of five operated by a person and that one is "exclusively for shitposting".
I'm feeling some constraints at scholar.social, but so far I think visibility levels are all I feel I need to manage varying types of discourse. But we'll see.
Chris Levesque@samplereality @telliott @ryancordell I don’t think I would want to be part of an institutional instance here in Florida.