bsky: @daniloc.xyzJun 21, 2024

I don't want to have a fight on the internet.

I know that's rich, coming from me, if you have even a little backstory—

such backstory being I parlayed a strange hobby beefing with rich guys into a job at a unicorn as the last cycle heated up

—but I'm almost 40 years old, man.

I don't have the energy to carry all this beef in my heart. I survived the absolute rollercoaster terror of 2020.

I want a nice time talking to reasonable people about interesting things. That is my social desire.

Show threadbsky: @daniloc.xyzJun 21, 2024

And Mastodon has a serious social illness that cannot be ignored.

Just a terrible apathy for collaboration. A penchant for sealioning at best, straight up default hostility at worst

So I'm going on record right now: I believe this problem will be Mastodon's dead end.

It suffocates culture. You know my deepest conviction is that technology is not enough.

Show threadbsky: @daniloc.xyzJun 21, 2024

It's a crime because Mastodon is a beautiful thing.

A miracle, some ways, BOTH technological and social. The successful federation, the macro-moderation it enables, the thriving volume of instances.

The fact that as a truly evil plutocrat bought a commons and then began deplatforming its journalists, Mastodon could provide a truly workable alternative.

Extraordinary.

BUT: Mastodon is its own worst enemy.

Its querulous, joyless norms will set a ceiling on its impact.

Maybe they can fix it?

Show threadJenniferplusplusJun 21, 2024
@danilo it would help a little if we can stop conceiving of this place as mastodon. Mastodon the software is what it's creator wishes it to be. And that has certainly shaped the norms on this network. But mastodon is one implementation among many. There's no reason it should be synonymous with the whole independent social web. It dampens our imagination when we forget that. And I think all of us, including mastodon, would be better off if we put more energy into other options.
Show threadbsky: @daniloc.xyzJun 21, 2024

@jenniferplusplus I think that's right idea, and the only real future for the underlying technology

The challenge of course is that ‘Mastodon' by its scale exerts enormous gravity on the larger ecosystem, if only because it's the simplest way for most people to access it

So realizing the ideal you describe means seriously potent alternative onramps. Maybe we'll see those!

Show threadMistyJun 21, 2024
@danilo @jenniferplusplus Migration feels like a major problem, at least for people who are already using Mastodon. The social cost of moving from one instance to another still feels high, regardless of the software on either end. And replacing an active server with different server software has big implications for the users who are already there, even if you keep posts/social networks in the process.
Show threadJenniferplusplus
@misty @danilo both very true points. Some of that is just thorny technical problems, and implementers need to work through it. Some is social, but it's downstream from mastodon's affordances and design decisions.
Jun 21, 2024 at 6:14amWeb