FadeFeb 5, 2023
Is the sudden drop in traffic on my timeline here lately because people are wandering away from Mastodon again, or because of defederation, or because of DDOS attacks? Whoooo knows? Sigh.
Show threadFadeFeb 5, 2023

I am extremely fond of Mastodon. I want to hang out here for a good long time. But I'm seeing a lot of my friends quietly detach from this place because there's so much "here are the etiquette rules for this tea shop, I can't believe you didn't lift your pinky" going around that, well, who has the energy for that these days?

I cope by just ignoring most of that, but then, I've got no following or public career to worry about.

Show threadAurora B (FKA James D) :firefish:Feb 5, 2023
@fade I'm surprised to hear so much frustration with other users making their desires known. Things like CWs and Alt text were very easy for me to start doing and I appreciated the thoughtful community caring about them

I think you have the right attitude of not worrying too much. It makes me sad to think people are silently quitting these spaces because they are made to feel uncomfortable about what they're posting.

But I also wonder if it's maybe for the best that people who are so bothered by the 'etiquette' aren't the early adopters. By the time they arrive on the #Fediverse the more empathetic of us will perhaps have built even more technical tools to help make this a comfortable place for everyone to socialize.
Show threadFadeFeb 5, 2023
@Jdreben Honestly? The alt text and CW discourse has been pretty damn un-empathetic at times. I've seen very kind and thoughtful people get so stressed out about contradictory instructions and lists of 'must always warn' stuff that they end up never posting anything, which... defeats the point of social media. It's the people who shrug and go "haters gonna hate" who seem to be comfortable sticking around. And I'm not sure that's for the best.
Show threadAurora B (FKA James D) :firefish:Feb 5, 2023
@fade huh I follow that too. I hope the vocal few do not stress out too many approaching new forms of social media.

Ultimately I think people should feel more empowered here than elsewhere to post anything filter anything and block anyone they want.

It certainly seems excessive to get stressed out about it when at least here there's no algorithm force feeding you content you don't want. It requires manual reactive or proactive filtering and blocking but hey you have that option. But I get that's not obvious or not easily accessible on every #fediverse platform / client
Show threadFadeFeb 5, 2023
@Jdreben I don't think the problem is "it's not apparent that there are filters"; it's that people show up here, and go, "Oh boy, there are filters, that way people will only see what they want of what I post, I can be myself, like people keep saying I can be here!" and then have pre-existing users scold them repeatedly for not following The Rules Of Doing Mastodon instead of just, like, unfollowing them. Who needs that stress?
Show threadAurora B (FKA James D) :firefish:Feb 5, 2023
@fade I'm sympathetic to that. Like the quote tweet thing, people can be ruder to individuals and feel more strongly than they should imo.

Not many people I know irl even give mastodon that much of a chance to face this situation. I wonder if I'll see it more when there's more adoption in my community.

When that happens I think I'll remind / advise them that here they must take moderation into their own hands. Feel free to ignore / block any scolders. And if an entire instance isn't accepting them then choose another. Ugh the fediverse just gives so many options. It's so sad to think people don't feel empowered to take moderation of their feeds into their own hands here where there are certainly more tools than anywhere but E2EE chats to do so.
Show threadFade
@Jdreben I mean, again, I don't think it's so much about not feeling 'empowered' so much as not wanting to deal with the hassle. If the whole point of social media is to interact with other people, getting a lot of scolding and negative reactions in a place one isn't already invested in makes it easy to nope out. It's a bit like dating; lots of deal-breakers on a first date are things we'd be fine working with in a long-standing relationship with known benefits.
Feb 5, 2023 at 11:42pmWeb
Show threadAurora B (FKA James D) :firefish:Feb 5, 2023
@fade Interesting. I hear you but am not sure I totally do get it.

To me this stuff is more like e-mail than dating.