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.
3/ The other issue is journo/news/politics Twitter is just one thing and not terribly large. I'm always fascinated by how many Twitters there are. Virology twitter, History Twitter, Black Twitter, Tech Twitter, Comics Twitter. There are whole ecosystems of Twitter. And I have zero idea whether anything comparable is happening in those ecosystems. I'm curious to find out the answers to both.
4/ Realize I didn't properly explain the three options about a) It's just all the people I know congregating here but that's it. No broader migration. b) migration of high profile accounts spurs mass migration. c) high profile accounts migrate, no one cares and high profile accounts return to Twitter to a chorus of sad trombones.
John Brownlow@joshtpm there are a ton of infosec people here already. I think it's possible that Mastodon and Twitter diverge into different kinds of spaces as opposed to a wholesale migration. That may be a good thing.
Now at @@thejohnbrownlow @joshtpm I definitely think there's a very good chance that some interest groups peel off from Twitter and end up congregating on Mastedon.
I definitely wouldn't be surprised, for example, if there are Mastodon instances that become the dominant social network for discussing Linux (or some distros), FOSS. Perhaps retro computing (especially if someone codes a decent terminal-accessible front end for old C64s and Amigas).
Likewise, I could definitely foresee some academic disciplines, hobbies (eg book Twitter becomes book Mastodon), or marginalised communities that get targeted on the bigger social platforms making a home on a Mastodon instance.
@thejohnbrownlow @joshtpm I was thinking over this earlier today.
There is another possibility that becomes apparent if you think of social networks as communities, rather than as tech platforms.
Given how divided the US is at the moment, there's certainly a distinct possibility that we end up with separate "red state" and "blue state" social networks.
In which case, in effect what we've seen in the past week is a switch in where Twitter sits in that dichotomy.
Before, Twitter was, arguably, becoming the "blue state app" while Trump supporters were moving elsewhere (Parler, Truth Social, etc).
With Elon, that dynamic has flipped, but the underlying trend remains. Those "red state" users are returning to Twitter as the "red state app", with Mastodon or Tumblr becoming the"blue state app".
Note: these dynamics are just in the US, things could play out differently in different corners of the world. (1/2)
@thejohnbrownlow @joshtpm The other thing is that we might see twitter and Mastodon being relatively more or less successful in different countries or languages.
(We've already seen it with, say, Weibo in China or Kakao and Line in South Korea.)
I think some European governments — France and Germany in particular — have made it quite clear that they're not too fond of the idea of US social networks having strong market dominance. I noticed the German government already has an official Mastodon instance.
It's not difficult to imagine Mastodon building critical mass in some languages or countries, with backing from their governments.
And it could be in others that Twitter holds on, in the same way BlackBerry phones basically outlasted the company in Indonesia.
Just some musings on how this could all play out, so take it for what it's worth...
(2/2)
@ajsadauskas @thejohnbrownlow These are really good points. The fact that most of the dominance social networks are based in the US is a massive, massive sort of soft power, quite apart from potential abuses. So lots of countries, even friendly ones, have this interest.
@joshtpm @thejohnbrownlow Here's an interesting stat.
According to Twitter's own figures, just 10% of users contribute 90% of the content: https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-where-did-tweeters-go-twitter-is-losing-its-most-active-users-internal-2022-10-25/
It stands to reason, then, that if that 10% go someplace else, then 90% of the posts disappear. And it would be more than that, because there's less content for the other 90% of users to share and comment on.
It would be interesting to know what the breakdown of posts and engagement is between accounts controlled by people, as opposed to companies, government bodies, and organisations. Below a certain level of engagement, corporate accounts become a waste of time.
What that all seems to point to is the potential for Twitter becoming ICQ or MySpace in a very short space of time. And that's assuming Elon hasn't already done anything stupid like fire the network engineers who keep the service online.
@ajsadauskas @joshtpm add to that the fact that the $8 charge will not be paid by casual users, AND their experience will be degraded per Elmo, so most likely they will simply quiet quit as opposed to looking for an alternative. Basically, more time spent in TikTok is my guess.