I am irritated by people trying to justify changes to how the systems work here, by saying the changes worked at twitter, improved 'satisfaction', or people were 'happier'
Twitter's metrics are based on making the service bigger. To engage, to enrage, to grow the number of people on it. To sell adverts and exposure.
It wasn't focused on making the service healthier for conversation or consumption, or making interactions nuanced, deliberate, or more considerate.
🧵
Consideration doesn't lead to viral engagement. Putting things that annoy people, or validate their own prejudices do.
There are entire communities that set up here because of the direction twitter took with their polarizing algorithmic mix.
The twitter QT divorced the original poster from the conversation, but left them open to people parachuting in to reply at them when they were outraged enough to do so, out of context or nuance. Bet the engagement clicks metrics looked great though.
It shows that racists, fascists, transphobes and the like will use the tools you give them. Anyone who's tried to report harrassment on twitter knows how driven it was by number of reports, not substance, unless you managed to find a sympathetic moderator.
Here is no different. The tools used on the first wave of people joining up was tone policing, toxic positivity and 'civility'. Many joined the big instances only to find them poorly moderated, but heavily policed in this way.
Many people, me included, have started up here and it's been a breath of fresh air. Due to being targeted by a prominent transphobe, I've had to be very careful how I interact on twitter. Locked down, my posts reached very few of my 3k followers due to whatever reason. (And yes, I reported the attacks)
If I say 'hellsite', a lot of people will immediately know which social media site I am talking about, and I want ex-twitter folk to sit down and fucking reflect on that.
@benosteen I agree with your critique of calling for changes to Mastodon based on market-driven justifications used at Twitter.
But it's important to recognise that other reasons have been given, in particular for wanting QRT or quote-boost. There have been a number of appeals for this from Black people wanting to recover the "call and response" conversations that were important for their community on Twitter. See this thread and others by Dr. Johnathan Flowers:
Couple of things I want to offer to Mastodonians when they make objections to folks of color and other marginalized folks complaints about mastodon. First, from Sara Ahmed on systems: “a system is working when an attempt to transform that system is blocked.” That is, your arguments that mastodon will transform due to the influx of users falls short in light of the ways that the institution or system of mastodon has previously fallen short.
Ben O'Steen
Zoe
Jim Richardson