Jeff JarvisI should share that I was an advisor briefly to Post.news, asked to put together an advisory board. I withdrew for various reasons -- disagreement about another advisor and about federation -- and have no ties to it now. I received nothing. I like Noam, its founder, and respect his work (Waze!). I'll watch Post. But I'm much more engaged here and want to study and learn about the potential of federation -- ActivityPub, Bluesky, Scuttlebutt -- as a model for public discourse.
Jackie Gardina@jeffjarvis I am curious whether you think a federated site can engage in the same mass mobilization of social justice movements that Twitter did globally. I am thinking of Arab Spring and the BLM movement in the summer of 2020.
NumbCat9 💜s trans folx 🏳️‍⚧️@jackiegardina @jeffjarvis of course it can. why wouldn’t it?
@numbcat9 @jeffjarvis I guess I haven’t quite figured it out yet. It was a serious and perhaps naive question. I saw more than I wanted to see on the bird site because of the algorithm. One benefit is that it did elevate global events. How would that work here?
@jackiegardina @numbcat9 I think that question -- what impact the algo had on spread of #BLM, @Metoo -- is worthy of study. I believe they could have broken out -- and perhaps did -- by the force of popular attention.
Jeff Yang@jeffjarvis @numbcat9 @jackiegardina @Metoo From the research I’ve seen (and done) it’s the combo of algorithmic trending and traditional media using “trending” as a signal of newsworthiness that leads to explosive attention capture by phenomena with a viral online component
That’s less possible on #Mastodon; an external trend tracker be built but it wouldn’t have as strong a feedback loop as on-platform and few media are on here
@originalspin @jeffjarvis @jackiegardina @Metoo also keep in mind that all of those things happened *years* after Twitter started. Twitter grew and those features evolved over time. Mastodon simply has not had the time to do these things.
@jackiegardina @numbcat9 @Metoo @jeffjarvis #Twitter was founded in 2006; Twitter launched the Discover tab in 2011 and was becoming a major part of news stories from then on. So that’s five years. #Mastodon was funded in 2014 and eight years later, it’s only now beginning to pick up steam…because of a flood of traffic from Twitter. Mastodon has had the time, it just has chosen NOT to pursue the goals of growth and media attention.
ShantyMinister 
@numbcat9 @jeffjarvis @originalspin @jackiegardina @Metoo
Hope folks are looking at what Dr Johnathan Flowers is doing and posting re: #Mastodon shortcomings (development approach), and considerations for not repeating other SM mistakes in platform building.
It can choose to make the right decisions, or will repeat the mistakes and biases of the engineers building on the platform.
Dr. Johnathan Flowers (@[email protected])
This shit demonstrates exactly some of the arguments I've been making here. The thing that I want to direct everyone to is this: "There is a fundamentally diferent culture here that you will need to understand or accept or you won't make it here... This is a world of builders.. you won't get anywhere by publishing social thesis or critiques." https://soapbox.midwaytrades.com/objects/0c9b5e2b-1673-408d-acef-e6e7024ff3f1
@jeffjarvis @originalspin @jackiegardina @numbcat9 @Metoo .. regarding a kind of #Fediverse charter of sorts (to avoid scaling problems, moderation, legal issues, unintended consequences etc), Blaine (orig twitter engineer) has posted this.
https://mastodon.social/@blaine/109378711322415343
It needs work, doesn’t cover moderation, input for a more diverse range of folks who are good at that kind of thing, but it’s something for ppl to start a framework.