Josh "cortex" MillardJul 6, 2023
I’m a cranky old-web person but I’m just genuinely fucking mystified that the reaction to either Jack’s or Zuck’s new corporate social media landgrab isn’t a loud unanimous laughing “no, get fucked”. Twitter and Facebook were a warning, not an instruction manual.
Show threadJon BellJul 6, 2023

@joshmillard Also old-web person but there's a clear human need/desire here: people enjoy talking to their friends/strangers online in this format.

"Just don't do that" isn't going to get very far. "Use Mastodon, once you figure out how to work it, it's kind of good sometimes!" isn't either.

I used to work at Twitter. I saw all the data for what helped people genuinely enjoy themselves and find their people online. Musk is getting it all wrong, but ... so are the old-web types on Mastodon.

Show threadKat TiidenbergJul 7, 2023
@jbell @joshmillard fair, I'm with you on the need. But Threads isn't a good answer either. How could allowing for even more platform power to concentrate into the hands of Meta, who has a proven track record of being a bad actor possibly be a good idea even if it seemingly serves the need for conversation/debate/infromation/news/affective solidarity etc that Twitter served?
Show threadJon BellJul 7, 2023
@ktiidenberg @joshmillard Hello, and nice to meet you! Let me start by saying I know I’m not going to change your mind and you represent the point of view of many people on Mastodon. So I know I’m facing an uphill battle here. I considered and reconsidered if I should even respond for the reasons above, but I’ll give it a shot.
Show threadJon BellJul 7, 2023

@ktiidenberg @joshmillard I think there are two buckets of problems. Bucket one is what happens when your product scales to millions or billions of people.

Bucket two is stuff that Meta can do to harm things on Mastodon.

Bucket one, in my view, was always the goal and was always going to happen. Mastodon was never going to stay as a fringe idea, and any system struggles as it scales. More people, more problems. Mastodon already had to handle this. (See: the Wil Wheaton moderation debacle)

Show threadJon BellJul 7, 2023

@ktiidenberg @joshmillard The whole point was to provide a viable option that removed control from a single entity, with a single blackbox algorithm, with a single app, that wouldn’t let you leave and take your followers with you.

We did it! Mastodon proved the concept!

But the idea that we proved it too well, and we didn’t really mean it is odd to me. It’s like we wanted our band to be as big as possible, it’s playing at Coachella, and now we’re mad for selling out.

Show threadJon BellJul 7, 2023

@ktiidenberg @joshmillard Bucket two is things Meta can do. Easy fix: block Meta if it’s important to you.

But outside the hipster/activist/supernerd/fuck capitalism crowd, people welcome having their friends to talk to. And brands. And celebrities. They just do. Sorry they’re such dummies and so disappointing, but people also eat meat and love reality TV. People like what they like.

Show threadJon BellJul 7, 2023
@ktiidenberg @joshmillard So I feel like Mastodon can do one of two things: wait and see and block if/when Meta does something out of line, or move the goalposts. Admit that the goal of Mastodon wasn’t growth or a good experience. It was an elitist club who never wanted a fediverse at all. It wanted something anti-corporate, even if it’s worse for the vast majority of users.
Show threadJon BellJul 7, 2023

@ktiidenberg @joshmillard I didn’t join Mastodon because “at least it’s not owned by a billionaire.”

I joined to join a fediverse, which will naturally include people I disagree with, and services/apps with different moderation protocols, and the hope was that one day maybe the big companies would join in too. I wanted a decentralised network, and I wanted it to get as big as possible.

Show threadJon BellJul 7, 2023

@ktiidenberg @joshmillard So far, the Threads experience is far superior. Discovery of new content, moderation tools, onboarding, UI, and so forth. It’s just better, objectively, on many metrics normies care about.

To me, this is great news. Mastodon will get the benefits of ActivityPub’s explosion of popularity, but there’s always an option to block. The concept was validated, which is awesome, and if it backfires then people can make a decision on a server by server basis.

Show threadJon BellJul 7, 2023

@ktiidenberg @joshmillard I agree with the many think pieces about this, including from the Mastodon guy.

And that’s my version of those think pieces.

Show threadKat TiidenbergJul 8, 2023
@jbell @joshmillard hi, nice to meet you! And thanks for explaining even though you didn't think it would work. I actually don't have an entrenched view that if Threads uses Activity Pub and federates it will ruin everything it federates to (which I think was the position you were speaking against, yes?) Not because I am sure it won't either, more just because I don't feel entirely equipped to formulate a strong position yet. So my initial barging into your thread was about the step before ...
Show threadKat TiidenbergJul 8, 2023
@jbell @joshmillard .. which is the place we are at now, so my whole whinge is just a hopeless social media researcher one where I perfectly understand why people went on Threads, but I wish they hadn't and I wish they cared about consolidating all of their data, the power to govern what they can talk about etc into the hands of one provenly bad company.
Show threadKat TiidenbergJul 8, 2023
@jbell @joshmillard In general I think fragmented (in terms of who owns and governs), but federated (so we can all talk to each other) and ideally interoperable is the best possible future for social media. So I think we rather agree. But how that practically works, is of course complicated and confusing (eg if two spaces with different norms and moderation principles federate, what happens etc).
Show threadJon BellJul 8, 2023

@ktiidenberg @joshmillard Good chat, and I agree with much of what you’re saying. Internet stranger high five!

I wrote a comic about some of these issues in 2019 and have a soft spot for researchers because this was my Actual
job at Twitter. https://jonbell.medium.com/blue-sky-1-a8fbc449c88

Show threadJon BellJul 8, 2023

@ktiidenberg @joshmillard My main disagreement is with the assertion that Meta is provably bad and evil and nothing can possibly be done ever. I’d say the same in the criminal justice system.

Regulation matters. Engagement matters. The way I prefer to handle problems in the system is to increase regulation and scrutiny, not shrug and say “nope, pure evil, don’t trust them” because then you’re left with hoping people agree with you. There’s no teeth to that strategy.

Show threadJon Bell

@ktiidenberg @joshmillard “They’re evil billionaires” is fine, I guess, but it doesn’t really lead to much positive change other then wondering why the rest of the internet doesn’t agree with our Super Amazing Opinion.

People trying to actually change the system were all around me at Twitter. And the conversations had to go a lot deeper then “surveillance capitalism is a literal cancer, shut it down.”

Jul 8, 2023 at 8:42pmWeb
Show threadJon BellJul 8, 2023
@ktiidenberg @joshmillard Again, thanks for the nice chat and the work you’re doing in this space!
Show threadJosh "cortex" MillardJul 8, 2023
@jbell @ktiidenberg at the risk of sticking to my guns in my own replies: you can both recognize the necessity of working within the bounds of the system to try and produce incremental internal change within corporate behemoths, AND think that, yeah, surveillance capitalism is actually very bad and should in fact be dismantled. There’s a degree to which the compromise necessary to get to “yeah, it’s bad, BUT…” is ceding ground to a side that will never think of ceding any back.
Show threadJosh "cortex" MillardJul 8, 2023

@jbell @ktiidenberg I appreciate people inside of Twitter, FB, et al trying to accomplish sone good and sone progress, but the arc of history on this stuff has demonstrated, repeatedly and without real exception, that those efforts are overruled on the net outcomes by the corporate motivations of the C-level and investor stakeholders.

Try to good, sure, yes, please; but conceding almost everything and then clawing back some scraps is a despairing vision of the best possibilities of a future.