Barktic Fox Nov 9, 2022

I've seen a bizarre amount of trash-talk lately aimed at people - primarily freelance artists - who have expressed concerns about their ability to maintain an audience on Mastodon, because people shouldn't be trying to "make it" here. Because the Fediverse isn't about "building your brand". Because the "popularity contest" of amassing a Twitter following isn't something to strive for here.

The thing is, freelance artists need to be able to make money to LIVE by selling commissions, and if they have no reach (or ability to grow an audience) because of the way Mastodon works, they *can't* make this their Twitter alternative.

I get it, capitalism sucks and nobody wants The Brands to find the Fediverse to be an acceptable target audience, but y'all are the guy in the well haughtily chiding artists for participating in society. You get that, right? You do understand that there's a difference between Beyonce or Skittles and an independent full-time furry artist just trying to sell commissions at $40 a pop to make rent and needing the ability to reach new fans of their work to do so. Don't you?

Show thread​​깻잎 (상태: 좀비)Dec 17, 2022
@alahmnat IMO, one of the thing make this problem worsen, including AP is not designed to "make a brand" but Mastodon is worsening it by actively limiting the search function.
Show threadJoel de BruijnDec 20, 2022

@perillamint @alahmnat

Maybe pure commercial brands should set up their own instances to host their respective accounts for general webcare, products, conferences and news etc

Fans can follow according their liking.
I on the other hand can block them according my not - liking.

They have to grow organically instead of algoritmicly tho. Activitypub is great for word of mouth.

The non-consensual eye-balling is absent by design indeed.

Show thread​​깻잎 (상태: 좀비)

@joeldebruijn @alahmnat I also agree that, but for small business / individual artist / etc, it is impractical to discovered to the public because

i) there is no way to know someone in some instance which does not have relationship with my server.
ii) although there is a large relationship built between servers, if the federated timeline is too fast for humans to discover someone, it is meaningless

(cont)

Dec 20, 2022 at 2:34pmWeb
Show thread​​깻잎 (상태: 좀비)Dec 20, 2022

@joeldebruijn @alahmnat Someone can argue there is a hashtag for those tasks, but as we know, peoples are *sucks* at tagging stuffs properly, unless they are trained to do so.

IMO, the search function for public posts can lift off some restriction and let people discover other people and some AP implementation implements proper search in them (Misskey), but in case of Mastodon, they are actively against to implement the function.

Show threadJoel de BruijnDec 20, 2022
@perillamint @alahmnat
Fair point , it would largely depend on out of band communication. For example I discover an artist on bandcamp and their profilepage mentions a Mastodon account.