Joshua MarshallSo two questions I have about the Mastodon migration. We're about to learn how much highly watched accounts drive Twitter's broader audience. Here's what I mean. I am stunned at how many people I know have already set up Mastodon accounts in the last 48 hrs. Like it seems like almost everyone I know has set one up. Probably I'm not going to notice a lot who haven't yet. I'm mainly reacting to how many I see. But still, it's a huge number.
2/ The people I'm talking about tend to be very high follower accounts - at least in the news/politics space. But on their own they account for a minuscule number of accounts. A few hundred people. Totally meaningless in terms of Twitters scale. So we're about to see whether it just doesn't matter at all, or whether that small number of high profile accounts pulls over a big chunk of audience or whether no one cares and it's just a few hundred people talking to each other. I don't know.
emptywheel@joshtpm Doesn't it depend on how we post Over Threre?
That is, if people have to come here--or get more value over here--they'll come over here?
Not sure how to distinguish the two yet.
Joe@emptywheel @joshtpm I'm just a nobody on social media, but for me, it's been a far more pleasant experience over here; pretty much an asshole free zone, and I don't have the Twitter algorithm decide that I want to see some rant by a wingnut. That might change. Because I'm following quite a few journalists, I expect that once their activity switches to mainly Mastodon, which will happen if Elon keeps making Twitter worse, I won't miss anything, they will boost the big stories.