emptywheelHere's a comment for incoming Twitter users: I've found that some are really put off by the way Mastodon requires push and pull to get to information. Rather than Elmo telling you what to read (and steering you to most incendiary content), you have to go look for it and choose to consume it. Most notably, I've come to think of "Content Warnings" as instead subject lines, just like you'd use in an email, so readers can scan whether they want to read further.
Luigi de Guzman@emptywheel what is really putting people off right now isn’t so much the push and pull as the how impossible it is to find…anyone. People are trying to reconstitute social networks of mutuals now and the system is designed to make this difficult on purpose.
@emptywheel so many posts trying to be helpful seem to assume people are migrating and starting over from zero. Maybe that’s why I see so many enthusiastic “this is a COMMUNITY we BUILD!” posts. New migrants already had communities they want to re-build. Support for that is…less evident.
AnnDebirdify is a website that scans your Twitter follows and lists for mastodon accounts. Super helpful for finding your network here.
https://pruvisto.org/debirdify/
It's really slow today, but just worked for me.
@AnnIsHere @emptywheel people are now moving over faster than they update their profiles on Twitter, so this is of limited use at best.
In any event it’s been down for me all day.
Eric VeySome of the admins have put together lists of users that can be imported into your account.
So, for example, I like to follow journos and Adam Davidson runs an instance for them. He has a list of people of people that joined his instance which I imported.
The only trouble I've had with this is that most of the time the spreadsheet (in csv format) has way too much info, so I use a spreadsheet program to delete all the columns except the user names.
@vey981 @emptywheel this isn’t really what I’m talking about. It isn’t about finding academics or journalists or content creators. More like finding regular users. Fandoms etc.
Yes I know about hashtags. But I’m looking for individuals.
I can't help you because I never used the bird that way. I used the "other button" and only saw things as they were posted chronologically by people I followed. So this is all very familiar to me.
Too much Kardashian type garbage using the algorithm button.
@vey981 @emptywheel same as me. What’s going to die with the bird are all my mutuals. Even if they do make it on here, it’s nearly impossible for new users to search for people they already know. Most people will quit.
Mastodon locals will say “good riddance” to those folks while simultaneously talking a big game about community/welcoming/whatever
I know that we both have a serious investment in time. I had my TL just right over there. It took years. When I was new to the bird, I had trouble finding the right people to follow, but mentions on other media of the addresses, got me pointed in the right direction.
My TL here is getting better every day, much faster than the bird TL. I am frustrated, too, but eventually, somebody boosts a post from an "old friend" and I am in luck.
As for keeping followers, it's not part of my job and I don't think I have such Important Things to say that I need any.
@emptywheel @vey981 not a question of Important Things To Say as much as “these are actually people I see and hang out with offline, but we never really exchanged contact information in any other way because we were both on the same platform”
For a lot of folks the death of the bird takes a piece of their real lives too.
Bird is not dead yet, but you need to export your data. So start sending out tweets saying how to find you here. If it's as important to them as it is to you, with your username here, they should be able to find you. I use Tuskey and it can search by username.
@emptywheel @vey981 already on the data export. I don’t think anybody’s home over there to handle it, lol.
Also the consistently brutal response I get from users here seems to be: if people don’t make the effort to find you here then your connection wasn’t strong enough. Ah, the welcoming Fediverse community!
Mine took 3 days and it was in my spam folder. Those people are not wrong. If you put your Mastodon username in the bird bio, and add it to tweets and replies, if they care, they will find you.
Rant Ninja@Ouij Lock the doors if you want a purity test ;)
Respectfully.
David J. Atkinson@Ouij @emptywheel I strongly suggest trying #Debirdify to find people you were following on Twitter. If they have made any mention of their instance and user name you can find ad follow them on Mastodon
TheEnquirer@Ouij - well, you can always fork the Mastodon project and maybe make your own version which has an easier on-boarding process for people who held prior communities elsewhere.
An alternative option for people with large followings is hosting their own instances of Mastodon - specifically for their communities they held on another platform. Then everyone will be together on the same #local feed.
That's what I'm gonna test out.
@TheEnquirer it’s a hell of a lot to say “yeah man just fork it” to a guy whose technical skills amount to “maybe wrote one bash script once.”
And the people having the hardest time are the new arrivals.
Don’t worry it’s gonna get a lot quieter here when they figure out they don’t know how to find anyone. I suppose most of the locals prefer it that way
@Ouij - jeez man, I didn't mean you specifically.
Lots of people have been saying they'd like better discoverability features on Mastodon. And recently, many new users have taken it upon themselves to begin learning to fork & develop additional features for Mastodon - the kind you were pining for.
I wasn't telling you to do that specifically; but as encouragement for anybody *with* the technical skill in the community who sees my post to try it out.
We're not the only ones here, ya know :P
@TheEnquirer everyone seems to want to tell me the lack of discoverability is some sort of design feature?
This is a network that seems to be built by & for people that are ambivalent about whether they actually want to be found on a network
@Ouij - I am quite interested in having a discussion about this, as I've been enjoying talking about the design philosophy behind Mastodon/FOSS federation with others but, . . . you seem a little agitated about the topic and I don't care for arguments.
What I will say, is that I apologize if anybody here has left a sour taste in your mouth regarding the platform or your genuine questions. I hope your evening is more pleasant 💗