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 MarchánNov 5, 2022
@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
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 threaddzamie 
@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.
Nov 5, 2022 at 3:12amWeb