Zooming out to this whole conversation on Twitter because it really is bizarre. To summarize:
Tracy Chou: I don't like that I have to use Mastodon to read stuff from tech people.
Doge Guy: Tech people have nothing worth hearing anyway.
Elon Musk: I hope tech people stay on Mastodon.
So basically, if you want to hear from tech people, you must use Mastodon.
But according to Elon Musk, why would you do that? Tech people have nothing worth saying anyway. And he hopes they stay on Mastodon.
Whether Elon Musk likes it or not, tech people have important things to say that a whole lot of other people want to read.
For example, here's Google employee @johnmu talking about search engine optimization.
https://mastodon.social/@johnmu/109879325577937391
This is actually something that a lot of publications might want to report on.
Social networks are not always about how many people use them, but more specifically *who* uses them.
Twitter itself was never that popular compared to Facebook.
It always had an outsized influence on public culture due to who used it.
Well, now tech people and academics have migrated over to the Fediverse.
Which means that if you want to talk to tech people and academics, you have to figure out how to use it.
For many people, the Fediverse is becoming critical for work.
In fact, the Fediverse is now so critical to the tech industry that GitHub rolled out support for Mastodon profiles this month.
That's not a small thing.
Again, if you want to talk to tech people, a Fediverse presence is paramount.
https://mastodon.social/@nova@hachyderm.io/109790532829442644
Here's the thing about network effects.
If a culture has a strong enough pull, everything adjacent to that culture gets pulled within its orbit.
This is why Tracy Chou finds herself forced to use Mastodon -- despite wishing she could stay on Twitter.
For example, where tech people go, tech executives tend to follow.
Where tech executives go, other industry executives follow.
Where executives go, VCs and investors follow.
That's how network effects work.
(A whole lot of people don't like the notion of money people hopping onto the Fediverse. But that's what happens when you build something so appealing to tech people: everyone adjacent gets pulled into it.
Thankfully, the Fediverse gives us freedom of association. We can quarantine the money people if that's what we want. Which is what has effectively been done to the crypto crowd.)
Let's now talk about the migration of academics to the Fediverse.
That's going to have wide-reaching implications across social media.
If Twitter continues its trend for maximum outrage-driven "virality", and the Fediverse continues its trend for quality research -- where will people go to cite high quality research?
Again, what's the network effect of academia migrating to the Fediverse?
* Public policy and think tanks will follow
* R&D departments will follow
* Students will follow
Everything in academia's orbit will be pulled into the Fediverse.
As much as I hated Twitter's blue checks, I admit that they were damn effective for building reputation.
By Elon Musk making this a paid feature and phasing out "legacy Twitter Blue", he's killed the reputation of the blue check.
And that has an effect on the network effect because one thing academia is very concerned about is reputation.
Now that academia is using the Fediverse, it's entirely possible that academics will build tools for building reputation.
The Fediverse will succeed because it attacks Big Social in an existential sense.
Sure, Meta and Twitter can copy Snapchat and Clubhouse and Telegram.
They can't copy the Fediverse's decentralized structure because that's an attack on Big Social's existence.
The reason Big Social exists is to control your social graph!
It's interesting how Elon Musk reacts to this attack on Twitter's existence.
His response is, "Well, everyone migrating to the Fediverse has nothing worth saying, and I hope they stay there."
Pretty much, that's the only thing he can say because what's the alternative?
He can't integrate ActivityPub and federate Twitter with the Fediverse. That would destroy the reason he bought Twitter.
All his decisions over the past 3 months would be useless.
@atomicpoet @fediversenews
Is the fediverse's mere existence really an attack? I can see how someone as self-absorbed as bird dude would interpret it as an attack because obviously it has to be all about himself.
I interpret the fediverse as a set of social media solutions bypassing Big Tech completely. Is being ignored/mocked from a different jurisdiction truly an attack? It's hardly aggression. But big tech's response to it has totally been aggressive.
Who's really attacking whom here?
Absolutely this. He has backed himself into a corner of his own arrogance. He literally fired everyone who could have saved him from himself and now he's unchecked.
@tetraca @fediversenews But look at this chart for Friendica. It's not just Mastodon that's growing, it's other Fediverse services too.
@atomicpoet @fediversenews
Instead of "reputation", I would phrase academics' concerns as being with verifiable credentials, accreditation and peer credibility within that field. Or similar.
I find the term "reputation" to be overused and unhelpfully vague. Reputations can be built with any demographic but how reliable/credible are its members?
Remember when universities hosted Usenet instances?
A U mastodon instance is a nice way to keep alumni close.
Perhaps of interest:
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/02/02/from-the-community-stanford-needs-an-official-mastodon-server/
And uc santa cruz now has a mastodon server (go slugs!) https://mstdn.social/@ucsc
Blue checks were a status symbol everyone craved. Now anyone with a few bucks can buy it.
The thing that needs to be got over to all kinds of business types, is to understand that this is a different place. that
To succeed here, it's necessary to respect the culture. This needs a different, (better) kind of marketing.
Raspberry Pi did a brilliant job of moving in early and using their own kit for an instance, and then blew it completely by having a completely deaf ear to the culture here.
@atomicpoet @fediversenews I still have fond memories of only a few months ago when my timeline consisted of academics, artists and gender fluid gamers, and it was so sweet.
But I've met a lot of really interesting, and equally nice people since the Musk implosion.
@atomicpoet wait what happened to the crypto crowd? Fediblocked?
I was wondering what was keeping Mastodon from turning into Nostr.
@atomicpoet
Yep. I dunno who Tracy Chou is but I've watched the geek places progressively pull in others over and over again.
We move, they follow.
Eventually so many of them follow that it starts to suck and we have to build something less sucky.
Maybe one day we'll find a way to build something too weird and difficult for them to all follow, but I doubt it.
Weirdos explore the edges of the social space, and then when they find something that works everyone else flows in.
@atomicpoet @fediversenews GitHub supporting Mastodon isn't a sign the Fediverse is critical.
It's a sign someone in the org thinks supporting Mastodon is a good thing. That someone had sufficient pull to get the work done and announced, but isn't necessarily convinced of "critically".
Don't get me wrong: it's great, but don't read too much into it.
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