So. Three folks I follow are echoing pretty much the same sentiment I've been trying to express and are spending less time here.
I'll preface with a reminder that you may very well feel my opinions are bunk. I am a successful YouTuber, after all, with all the privileges that entails.
But here's the brass tacks: it's harder for me to be here comfortably than it was on the birdsite. And to be honest, I think Mastodon's always gonna be this way.
Whenever I encounter problems, I am inevitably told I should try different instance. Whenever anybody has problems, people say "maybe you should move instances"
I do not know why so many people fail to grasp this, but we are experiencing mastodon between instances far more than we are on our own. I hardly ever look at the home tab for mas.to, I look at who I'm following on the Home feed.
That in-betweeny space is apparently impossible to moderate.
If a post of mine gets a boosted to a broader audience, I am subject to harassment. I'm not going to sugarcoat that, it's harassment.
Sure, of the various kinds of harassment I have not been subject to anything serious. But it is exhausting and personally insulting, with one person telling me in no uncertain terms that they don't believe my job should be a job.
This. Fucking. Sucks.
And who's accountable for taming that? Nobody! Because it's between instances.
So, I have been trying really hard to live within the space where nobody can reconcile whether they want Mastodon to be more popular or whether they wanted it to remain a bunch of small corners in personal sandboxes. But it's getting really hard some days, and because the stakeholders of this idea are so spread out and so disparate in their opinions, I'm not hopeful anything will get better in this regard.
Mastodon's whole existence feels tortured.
And as much as I would love to be a cheerleader for this idea, well firstly, I'm not sure people even want me to be a cheerleader! This feels like a place full of hipsters that don't want people to find their fun coffee shop.
But even if people wanted me to help spread the idea of mastodon, or Fedi more broadly, to be honest there are just far too many caveats for me to suggest my friends and colleagues come here.
I would hope you'd be concerned by that.
But at this point, it feels like that's what people want. There is no desire to make this platform more usable for people with larger audiences.
Christ, just the fact that notifications aren't stacked makes using this really hard as someone with a sizable following.
If the culture is that anti-growth, if it's to remain that fractured and rudderless, I don't see a fun future here.
Fin
@Weirdaholic @metrogn0me_gr @TechConnectify There are things that an instance moderator can do and things that an individual user can do, but they are less effective against a diffuse or persistent campaign of abuse (or both.)
There's also a lot of gaslighting where people talk about abuse and everyone who doesn't see it goes "Really? Are you sure it's that bad?"
@aris_tgd @metrogn0me_gr @TechConnectify I guess people have to learn, that things can exist, even if they can't see them... :/
It's quite interesting, though, how bad we seem to be at handling moderation collectively.
@metrogn0me_gr @Weirdaholic @TechConnectify this is why I mentioned that people are working on these problems, but those systems are not in place now, and people's livelihoods depend on having them. If one system doesn't provide them, people will look elsewhere.
The answer to why people are using social media networks other than Mastodon is that their needs aren't getting met here and they don't have time to wait.
@metrogn0me_gr @TechConnectify
I think the big difference is the amount of followers.
When you have tens of thousands of followers, your toots tend to get amplified, and amplified toots tend to get more attention, both good and unfortunately, quite bad.
@Emi @TechConnectify phanpy.social is also good for this. It is important to stress that neither Elk or Phanpy are instances you have to move to, they are just clients you can use in your browser.
Other than that I'm sorry about the abuse and issues. I, and many with me, really wants this to be a platform for the masses. But we need to find solutions to this.
@brunoph here's the thing I really don't get. I never, ever, used Twitter with the recommended feed or whatever. I only looked at the people I was following. That feed was chronological, and they never took it away.
The extent to which an algorithm shaped what I was seeing was basically the occasional ad and whatever the heck was on trending. I really don't get why so many people fixate on the algorithm
@brunoph I only used Twitter by looking at people I followed, and I would find new people to follow by whatever they retweeted.
So like, the most toxic and weird things I dealt with on Twitter were when my tweets would get retweeted and become viral. But they had really good systems to make sure I didn't have to see most of the drivel that was directed at me.
That's what's missing here
@TechConnectify I think that one of the useful things here is that it should still be possible for someone to create instance and/or client software which does do filtering of low quality responses for people with that problem.
No one has written such software yet, and my guess is that such an instance would have to be commercial software or services, but nothing prevents it from fitting into the network.
Such an instance would have to be careful about how it handles such commercial behavior to not end up shitlisted, but my guess is that most people worth listening to won't have a problem.
Or am I misunderstanding the problem still?
@brunoph @TechConnectify In Friendica you have chronological feeds and I, for one, I chose to ONLY see the posts that MY FRIENDS make. Period. Not even the posts my friends interact with. This is how I keep it clean. If you want, give it a try via our instance at social.trom.tf - maybe out of curiosity.
In Friendica you can block or ignore anyone, make your posts only visible to your Friends, and so forth. Maybe a lot more control over your content. Take a few minutes to setup your account and maybe you do not have to worry ever again.
@TechConnectify yes, that's how I used it too, however, the people you follow might be using the recommended feed, which would be feeding into your chronological feed through retweets.
This is similar to how ad networks build profiles based on proximity rather than direct tracking (someone in your wifi network searched for something, thus they show you an ad for a similar thing, etc)
- Continue to improve onboarding, by having a screen to set your profile & main settings (like search discovery) without leaving the onboarding process - Rework notifications, with grouping support (Your post has been boosted by X people, instead of a notification per boost) - Federate link previews to avoid having each instance send a request to the URL, causing a lot of trafic (not an easy problem to solve, may move to 4.4)
I completely agree, and am really frustrated over this exact thing. When mastodon was first blowing up there needed to be a lot of changes and they needed to happen fast (and still do need to happen) - but this place was treated way too much like a baby by gargon who was "my way or the highway" so we all collectively spent months trying to convince him of very basic features that are needed.
I think now he kinda understands now - but by this point the wave passed and these needs are still unaddressed because so much time was spent debating and convincing. Thats not even getting into the absolute mess that is W3 and ActivityPub. Its seems OSS cant actually finish a decent protocol or adapt it to changes as convos around needed features take fucking weeks to advance inches.
Its also why a lot of people are starting to jump ship to misskey or firefish or akkoma or glitch or whatever - vanilla mastodon has taken way too long and people need this stuff now - so everyone else has caught up and are starting to lap mastodon on basic features. Heck if I didnt like my instance so much I would absolutely jump over to firefish or something.
@TechConnectify
Respectfully disagree. The project has been developed for free primarily by volunteers and they've been focused on the small groups of users interested in experimenting with something new for 5-6 years before the Twitter implosion drove a wave of new accounts with different needs to the network, which they have been responding to as quickly as they can given the available resources.
The main guy developing it for years has been earning 30k euros/yr through the nonprofit org building it, versus millions of VC that Bluesky is burning through and however much Twitter and FB/Insta have spent over the years.
I appreciate most of your comments in this thread, but wanted to push back on this one that seemed more rude toward the very small team working hard to bring us the service
@val
@_dmh @val Frankly, it was phrased rudely because this seems like such an obvious pain-point with regards to usability. I cannot believe that it hasn't come up in the last two years. Hell, probably five.
Notifications are pretty much useless to me here when something's going out beyond my audience (like today) and tedious on a good day.
Of course I respect the limited resources, but this particular thing is inexcusable to me.
@val @_dmh I am in fact interesting in seeing those numbers, yes. It's nice to know when things resonate.
Now the choice is between knowing when anybody does any thing or ignoring all that. There's a middle ground that existed for years and years (Ed Barkely and 57 other people liked your post) but it just hasn't been implemented here.
@TechConnectify
Our best efforts right now are essentially just trying to reserve hashtags for admins to try and collaborate in identifying bad actors and mass harassment. It's a slow process and even when we identify good processes it takes a while for it to enter common use.
I'm kinda used to things being this way, I grew up before professional moderation of internet spaces was a thing. I think you are right to want these sort of features. (cont)
- Continue to improve onboarding, by having a screen to set your profile & main settings (like search discovery) without leaving the onboarding process - Rework notifications, with grouping support (Your post has been boosted by X people, instead of a notification per boost) - Federate link previews to avoid having each instance send a request to the URL, causing a lot of trafic (not an easy problem to solve, may move to 4.4)
@TechConnectify I just want to say thank you for sharing this. I truthfully don't know how to fix this issue with Mastodon and the Fediverse in general and won't just try to shove solutions in your face.
I do think if people want this place to grow, they need to take these complaints and issues seriously. I have been fortunate to have a cozy space here where I chat with friends and that makes me happy and I get others do too and are happy about that. I just worry they are very willing to ignore people like yourself who want this to be a positive space too instead of trying to find actual solutions.
I hope people extend some humanity to each other and are willing to criticize this platform even if we enjoy it so that it will improve.
@TechConnectify Mastodon feels like a reinvention of the wheel of that era of "1990's internet" where everything was a wild west of disparate and loosely linked Geocities style websites
Are there cool people on Mastodon? Sure!
Is my Mom ever going to be on here? Oh Christ no, and at times I envy her ignorance
@Geniusak @TechConnectify Why is that something to be celebrated, exactly?
I make videos about niche old computer junk. I would love if my Mom not only knew what I did, what I *enjoy* doing but saw how much I was able to entertain or educate other people with what I do
I want anyone and everyone I can to share the things I find joy in. I don't want to gatekeep and squirrel myself away with a bunch of like-minds in a dingy corner
@CursedSilicon @TechConnectify
I don't what you're seeing that you don't want your mom seeing but in theory this loosely connected system is supposed to allow for the full power of the internet while still leaving control in people's hands.
I mean I'm sure you've heard the whole fediverse shtick. I'm just saying it resembles the old internet by design. Some of it may be unfounded nostalgia.
Theory and practice vary
@Geniusak @TechConnectify I'm definitely biased since I'm both into retro computers AND was around for a large chunk of the 1990's internet at the time
We never truly had anything decentralized. We had large IRC networks, we had companies like Geocities who acted as benevolent dictators rather than capitalist ghouls. Hell, we had services like Yahoo and Hotmail if you didn't want to use your ISP's email
And that's not even counting the misery of which BROWSER you wanted to use back then
@TechConnectify it's cold comfort, but hopefully Fedi some day does a good job bridging/interoperating with Bluesky and Threads so that users can have a site with an actual algorithm and fully developed tool without having to quit Mastodon completely.
As it sits now though, I get it
@VATVSLPR I found this issue ages ago. I want people to sit with it. Because if we want this idea to succeed, like it or not it needs cheerleaders like myself. In fact, it needs many more cheerleaders than just myself.
And I am not going to cheerlead for it in its current state.
And if people tell me I'm not welcome here, (which some have!)... all I can say is have a nice day.
@sexybenfranklin @VATVSLPR I mean, to me it seems pretty much a given that in order for an idea to succeed it needs to be a popular idea.
It's why I called LaserDisc a flop - it wanted to be in everybody's home. Its success as a niche videophile format wasn't what they were going for - it's what they settled for.
Maybe that's not a good analogy, but popularity =/= capitalism and growth can (and does!) exist outside of that framework.
@TechConnectify Honestly, I don't think it's true that it needs big users like yourself to "succeed". The fediverse has been around for over a decade now; it's already successful (in that it has a consistent userbase of people who find it useful) and it's not going away any time soon.
I'd say the biggest thing the fediverse needs to make progress on now is tackling issues with racism and other problems faced by minorities (focusing on diversity). Adding large numbers of users or "cheerleaders" isn't going to help with that in and of itself. And no offense to you, but as far as I'm aware, you're not one of those affected minority groups and don't appear to be particularly outspoken on those issues, either.
🦇
@diligentcircle It's all about what you mean by success. I got flak for saying LaserDisc was a flop - but compared to the goals its inventors had for it, it absolutely was.
My main hangup has been "what is success?" and the simple fact that everybody seems to have different answers goes a long way to explaining why this place feels so disjointed to me.
To your second paragraph: yes! I agree. But hostility towards popular people is also pretty icky, no?
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