Katerina MarchánNov 4, 2022

reasons mastodon's "viral dampening effect" is a good thing:

👉🏻 no "main character of the day"
👉🏻 no free text searching for people to get angry at (and harrass)
👉🏻 doomscrolling is *actually bad for you* and not a thing we should be trying to replicate
👉🏻 birdsite's virality is heavily driven by actual paid advertising and bots. You think that "Explore" tab gets its content organically? really? That's not making connections between people, it's about driving sales.

Mastodon is not, and should not be, a 1:1 replacement for Twitter. But it *can* be a new place for you to make valuable connections with other human beings. #twitter #twittermigration

Show threaddzamie Nov 5, 2022
@zkat Could you explain "viral dampening effect," please? This is the first time I've heard the term.
Show threadKaterina Marchán
@dzamie it’s a lot harder for things to explode virally on mastodon. It’s a thing I’ve seen complaints about and how it makes mastodon unviable, but I’m making the point that this is a good feature to have
Nov 5, 2022 at 12:43amWeb
Show threaddzamie Nov 5, 2022
@zkat Ah. What causes it, do you think? Obviously, the lack of algorithm is a major contributor (as said on tumblr, "there is no algorithm. *We* are the algorithm"), but even tumblr gets famous/infamous posts for awhile.
Show threadMattNov 5, 2022
@zkat @dzamie is that dampening or just a lack of amplification? Haven’t reviewed the relevant code myself.
Show threadKaterina MarchánNov 5, 2022
@mmszk @dzamie it's not "active" dampening. It's intentiona lack of features, like not having full text search, not having trending topics, not having quote toots (which encourage performative dunking instead of engaging like people), etc. All of those things make things more likely to go viral, but they also encourage toxicity.
Show threadEllenor Bjornsdottir   Nov 5, 2022
@zkat @mmszk @dzamie I QRB images that don't have alt text to add alt text (Pleroma has the quote-reblog feature and I use Akkoma which is a fork of Pleroma)
Show threaddzamie Nov 5, 2022
@zkat @mmszk Oh, it never occurred to me that a lack of post-search (aside from your own dash) would have that effect. The QRT thing makes sense, too.
Show threadJenniferNov 5, 2022
@zkat @dzamie so how do you stumble onto new people and topics if you aren’t someone who spends a lot of time on social media or lacks the time to learn all the features of mastodon?
Show threadmkbNov 5, 2022

@sim431 @zkat @dzamie

A great way to find what interests you is searching on related #hashtags. If you’re using the Mastodon desktop site you can even create pinned columns with the tags that matter most to you.

Good hashtags to search on are “introduction” and “introductions” (I’m not sure which is in vogue right now). People use those tags to announce themselves and give a little bit of background.

Good luck and have fun!

Show threadJames SlezakNov 5, 2022
@zkat @dzamie ur making a good point. i think though that there’s a “shared experience” that’s can be cool and even unifying when some things can break through across large parts of a network