Mike Masnick ✅Dec 21, 2022
I wrote about how I cannot understand why anyone is interested in joining a new centralized social media platform when we now have a great opportunity to move to protocols instead of platforms. https://www.techdirt.com/2022/12/21/why-would-anyone-use-another-centralized-social-media-service-after-this/
Why Would Anyone Use Another Centralized Social Media Service After This?

So, it’s been quite a year for legacy, centralized social media — and all without any really big change to the laws that govern it (yet — the EU’s are coming into force shortly, but pos…

Techdirt
Show threadOfficer-involved poopingDec 21, 2022

@mmasnick I firmly believe the answer is in the acculturation that massive platforms have fostered. Many people join services not to slowly and carefully cultivate a highly relevant and informative content stream - they want a quickly assembled deluge of distracting and emotionally engaging crap. The blog and RSS paradigm is not the dominant platform.

To that end IMHO, for mastodon or similar to challenge the big players, discovery needs to be optimized in ways we haven't seen before.

Show threadMatunosDec 22, 2022

@AKPAB @mmasnick I don't think people join services to get a deluge of distracting and emotionally engaging crap per se. I think they join due to network effects.

Once they're there, the commercial platforms have an interest to monopolize their users' attention, and that's where the emotionally engaging crap comes in, and all the efforts to push it at people via the algorithms, and keep their attention so they can also shove ads at them whilst collecting as much private data as they can.

Show threadMatunos
@AKPAB @mmasnick Open source federated networks have an advantage there in that they don't need to monopolize their users' attention to be successful, but to grow they do need to get and maintain a critical mass for the network effect to become an asset rather than an obstacle.
Dec 22, 2022 at 12:35amtooot
Show threadMatunosDec 22, 2022
@AKPAB @mmasnick To that end, I agree with you that discovery is a big factor— specifically how can users (especially new users) find the sorts of content they're looking for to feel like they can build themselves a useful social network— whether that is distracting and fun crap, breaking news, yelling at politicians, or in-depth discussions about shared interests
Show threadGeorge William HerbertDec 22, 2022
@matunos @AKPAB @mmasnick In the current instance, Twitter refugees using the transition accounts followed finders tools is a lot of findability for existing intentional social connections. But new tools on top of existing Mastodon protocols may be needed…