GuyDec 29, 2022
Sophie

I’m finding my feed skews very white and male despite the fact that I followed a lot of my Twitter friends over here.

I also find a lot of folks on here very “old guard”, in the sense that they have been here a long time and want you to know it, and that your opinion doesn’t count if you’re new. Some people have been quite rude.

Idk. I’m still not convinced.

Dec 29, 2022 at 3:44pmWeb
Show threadSophieDec 29, 2022
This post really sums it up for me: https://mastodon.social/@naunihal/109592092692839276
Show threadSophieDec 29, 2022
I’m really hoping Musk gets bored of his new toy and sells it on, and we can get back to normal. I don’t know whether to go back at the moment because feel gross about being part of a site that has unbanned Graham Linehan, Laurence Fox and Andrew Tate, to name but a few
Show threadPelle WessmanDec 29, 2022

@sophie I think we can build on the open social networks and make better readers, aggregators and more in them to try and fight this problem.

With Twitter we can’t do much unless eg Musk allows us.

In an open ecosystem we can and we can do so while leveraging the existing network effect of the open network.

I think it should be more in the style of blogs becoming our homes than in random Mastodon instances being it though.

Show threadJane Manchun WongDec 29, 2022
@sophie him be selling twitter to kanye west
Show threadSophieDec 29, 2022
@wongmjane fuck me let’s hope not
Show threadtobyDec 29, 2022
@sophie it won't and can't ever return to normal, and he can't sell a company so laden with debt it's effectively worthless since it could never be profitable (which he added as part of the Leveraged Buy-out). It's been sabotaged and is exploding, might as well enjoy the fireworks
Show threadtobyDec 29, 2022
@sophie I don't know if masto is the solution (deeply sceptical long-term tbh) but twitter is already dead, the only question is how fast the corpse rots
Show threadAlpacalypse 🇵🇸Dec 29, 2022
@sophie I instead hope Twitter goes under and he loses a shitton of money.
Show threadChris EnnsDec 29, 2022
@sophie I’m very much in the white male demographic so I ask this with a feeble attempt at acknowledging my biases / ignorance - but I follow hashtags (ie I have no idea where the #u2 fans are on here) in my mastodon feed and then automatically have a variety of people in my feed. Why wouldn’t that work for social movements as well?
Show threadSophieDec 29, 2022
@ichris mastodon doesn’t seem to have the same level of discoverability (by choice I presume). So unless someone happens to repost it into your feed or you already follow the hashtag, you don’t see it. And without the virality it can be hard to gain the traction these movements need
Show threadEric BaileyDec 29, 2022
@sophie I keep trying, but it is a very similar experience for me. And I’m a white guy 😑
Show threadMo MorganDec 29, 2022
@sophie Yeah it's been interesting moving from mastodon.social (showing my original join date) to my own instance (showing a date in the last month). I dunno how representative my experience is, but there does seem to be real snobbery around longevity.
Show threadSophieDec 29, 2022
@mo I replied to a post where someone was saying people should CW posts about politics, saying that I disagreed as it’s people’s lived experience. they looked at my profile, saw that the account was only a week old, and said I should listen to the people who had been here for years 🙃 the best part was that they themselves had “I don’t CW food posts” in their profile
Show threadMo MorganDec 29, 2022

@sophie Good grief. We could trade stories! But I'm going to reserve my right, as a middle-class white man, to keep shtum.

But yes, to your original point, diversity here is challenging. I put out a toot inviting people unlike me to make themselves known and it worked a bit. Might do that once a week, every week.

Show threadMatthew CassinelliDec 29, 2022

@sophie I’m really sorry you got involved with whatever that was when I shared your blog post.

FWIW that guy actually deleted his account which is kind of a good sign because he felt he couldn’t be smarmy here but could on Twitter.

Show threadSophieDec 29, 2022
@matthewcassinelli I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing here. This was an interaction I had a couple of weeks ago. Was there another one??
Show threadSophieDec 29, 2022
@matthewcassinelli oh right! You boosted the link I shared and that horrible guy replied. Yeah that was one such example. Thanks for being nice and telling him off!
Show threadCiara | Ciaraíoch 🎨Dec 29, 2022
@sophie Same. Finding it's less to do with who you're following and more to do with which people are talking the most. Or maybe which ones now feel less comfortable posting.
Show threadSophieDec 29, 2022
@Ciaraioch I know a few folks have made accounts but stayed on Twitter cos that’s still where their communities are (eg trans Twitter). Ultimately if your friends aren’t here, it makes sense you wouldn’t stay
Show threadCiara | Ciaraíoch 🎨Dec 29, 2022
@sophie I'm still on both (for now), partly for work reasons and partly because it's hard to find people around my own age here (and I'm no spring chicken, I'm 32), at least at the moment. And the humour side of things is definitely sparse compared to Twitter, I'd just miss the fun.
Show threadPaul BowsherDec 29, 2022
@sophie I followed a lot of those folks early on for discovery purposes, but have been pretty judicious in unfollowing them. My timeline is feeling closer and closer to Twitter all the time. I don’t think I have any expectations that this will replace Twitter for me immediately, I’m ok for it to gradually improve.
Show threadMiss PurpleDec 29, 2022
@sophie as a young black woman, I definitely feel like an outsider than somebody who belongs more often than not. That being said, I want to intentionally stick around, and see what part I can play in being some kind of catalyst.
Definitely cannot replace twitter, but it could present something 'new', with time.
Show threadSophieDec 29, 2022
@misspurple I hope it becomes more welcoming for you!