Bastian AllgeierNov 4, 2023

Reading the latest thread by Mastodon‘s CTO @renchap made me realize once more how small the team behind all this is and how they really try to listen to feedback and get it right.

It’s incredible what they‘ve achieved. It’s literally David vs Goliath compared to other social media platforms.

We should always keep that in mind when some things are not 100% smooth.

We get an ad-free, algo-free, tracker-free, lunatic-billionaire-free space in return 💛

Show threadgnaddrigNov 4, 2023

@bastianallgeier @renchap
"We get an [...]algo-free, tracker-free, lunatic-billionaire-free space in return 💛" - absolutely, and that is worth a lot of possible imperfection to me.

"We get an ad-free[...] in return 💛" - Well, not really ad-free. There must be thousands of accounts of (often smallish local) businesses that do nothing but drop advertising posts more or less regularly.

Occasionally, I reply to one of those ad posts, but have never once received any reaction from them, so /...

Show threadgnaddrigNov 4, 2023
@bastianallgeier @renchap
.../ I think they don't even monitor their Mastodon accounts, or if they do, they do not want to interact with their audience on Mastodon in any form, just churn out their stupid posts avertising cafés in Brisbane, carpentry in Atlanta, real estate in Dubai, plastic surgery in Chennai, etc. that are useless for 99% of their readers because this instance has users all over the world, and I'll not travel to Australia for a coffee or to India for a computer mouse. /...
Show threadgnaddrigNov 4, 2023

@bastianallgeier @renchap
.../ For me, these advertising accounts have become a major pain in the neck because there are more and more of them, clogging up the timeline. But I have no idea what could be done about them - is this behaviour even against the rules on mastodon.social? And if it is, how much moderating effort would be needed to actually stop them? Possibly too much.

But anyway, I like it here on mastodon.social :)

Show threadParigot-Manchot φNov 4, 2023
@gnaddrig @bastianallgeier @renchap Moderation. Just tell mods about spamming. And block them. Never saw ads here but I don't read federated/local timeline.
Show threadgnaddrig

@parigotmanchot @bastianallgeier @renchap

I usually block them already, except for the few I replied to. Will report them from now on, too.

Some examples:
https://mastodon.social/@webflaredigital/111346407152433788
https://mastodon.social/@blueboxdigital/111284842848032172
https://mastodon.social/@matildaswoodfiredkitchen/111261841145864417
https://mastodon.social/@customwooddesign/111261777268650458

Nov 4, 2023 at 11:27amWeb
Show threadBastian AllgeierNov 4, 2023

@gnaddrig @parigotmanchot Twitter was full of this. This is just the regular spam problem that every social media site has to deal with. As a user, you are in control to curate your feed and hardly ever see those.

But I'm talking about ads run by the platform. You can't do anything about those and you can't do anything about the necessary shady targeting techniques that the platforms have to use behind the scenes to keep their advertisers entertained.

Show threadgnaddrigNov 4, 2023

@bastianallgeier @parigotmanchot
"But I'm talking about ads run by the platform." - Of course, Mastodon doesn't run any ads or sell ad space, and I'm grateful for that. I'm aware that the type of spamming I described is nothing Mastodon is responsible for or can do much about.

Like I said, I like it here, and the pros of Mastodon outweigh the cons by far, at least for me.