My experience so far here is not terribly different from Twitter, to be honest. I'm here because most of the people I care about moved. But a substantial fraction of my mentions are people interpreting my every word as uncharitably as possible and telling me what an awful person I must be.
When blocking them gets too exhausting, I'll probably just drop off, and you'll have to tell me how awful I am via email or USPS. In person by appointment only,
It's entirely possible this is happening because, in fact, I'm really awful, and people are simply reacting to my awfulness. In which case, I'm sorry I'm ruining this place for you, and I'll try to do better.
But really, I think it's scale. At peak, I had about 90K followers on Twitter. Here I already have about 12.5K. At that scale, people want you to fit their expectations.
That said, the Nazis and election crazies aren't here (yet), and that's really nice.
Just to be clear: While I appreciate your support (*blush*), I know that there are people who enjoy what I have to say - and I enjoy interacting with you, too! And I also have friends in real life.
I'm just trying to explain what the experience here looks like from my end, and the ways it's a bit broken for me.
I don’t think that it’s bad that there’s a tension between “what was” and the expectations of the influx of new users. This is how things evolve.
One can’t want an existing open, federated social media experience to win out against closed systems without answering the question “if network effects draw more people here, what does that mean?”
Time will tell.
@mattblaze Well I always appreciate what you have to say.
Mastodon feels like a fleet of vast empty spaceships that millions of people fled to from a war-torn planet. The ships are apparently running on automatic but nobody’s managed to get into the ships’ respective bridges yet to find out for sure. So we just walk around like dazed refugees, trying to figure out who’s here, communicating with people on other ships, looking for things to do, and wondering where we’re all headed.
@mattblaze If and when they do, start tap dancing on the report button. It'll get taken care of.
More folks have your back around here than you might think.
@mattblaze I think the main benefit with Mastodon is that a lot of the crazies will find themselves on their own individual crazy islands as admins of instances block them/remove them.
Sure, some will still make it in, and you can't scrub the world clean of nut cases but in the long run I feel like Mastodon will be an easier platform to avoid a lot of that type of stuff.
@mattblaze I am just glad that Mastodon currently feels... quieter than Twitter has especially over the last few years.
Who knows what will happen if/when the crazies finally start coming over here because their favorite punching bags left their swamp. But yeah at that point I think having a good admin team will be big for sure.
I almost hit 'unfollow' after you sent me down the rabbit hole of "prominent locksmiths"
Like, are there banquets with awards and stuff?
(You're giving me flashbacks to interviewing the 'escape artist' side of Randi's life.)
@mattblaze
Scale is huge. Let's say only 0.1% of people are the sort to have this kind of knee-jerk uncharitable take. If you have 1000 followers, that means you'll have one comment along those lines for every post. If you have 10K, that means ten. Ten negative and unfair comments on every post is A LOT, even if they're mixed with many decent ones. Humans weight negative experiences much more highly in memory and emotional reaction. Ten is enough to feel like you're constantly being piled on and everyone is against you.
Unless you actively cull and prune followers to get that down to 0.01% or less -- which is a lot of work with rapidly diminishing returns -- this is gonna happen. It's not the platform so much as it's just the scale.
It's why I never want to have that many followers. On twitter I was at nearly 6K and it was beginning to feel uncomfortable. Glad to be back around 1K here.
@mattblaze I suspect most of the Nazi and election crazies are bots anyway. I wonder if Mastodon would be vulnerable to those 🤔
You forgot no advertised content on Mastodon though, that's probably my favorite "feature".
@mattblaze there's a joke in here somewhere.
Something like "the last time I tried to fit into someone else's expectations, they split at the seams," or "I tried fitting their expectations without belt and suspenders. The less said, the better."
@mattblaze If you aren't seeing the nasties and the crazies here, yet, I doubt you or we will have to wait long. Everytime something new comes along on the Internet, people start declaring that it will embody a wonderful world. By now, we ought not to be surprised that it doesn't happen.
So what was/is the point in changing venues? Removing support from an operation that is especially toxic. We can't eliminate nasties or crazies, but we don't have to stay where they are encouraged.
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