Technology ConnectionsSurely this new video won't make me seem like a crank.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJpZjg8GuA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJpZjg8GuA
YouTube
Michael Santaly@TechConnectify Looking forward to watching this with my coffee tomorrow! Also sorry to see you’re spending a lot more time on Bluesky than here, but I get it and appreciate you’re still cross posting your content
@wonkothesane I'll be real with you: this platform needs both better tools for those with large accounts and it needs a culture which isn't quite so trigger-happy to push popular accounts off the platform.
There are frictions here which are very hard to understand for the majority of its users.
@TechConnectify Yea, I agree with you. The work is being done, but painfully slow. Hopefully it’ll be ready when/if Bluesky enshittifies
ilinamorato@wonkothesane @TechConnectify honestly, I rather hope that Bluesky is constructed to make it functionally impossible. More options is always better. I don't have much faith in that yet, since there aren't yet any other "instances" of the ATproto, but theoretically it should be just as resistant to platform decay as the Fediverse.
Of course, the best case scenario would be for the ATproto and ActivityPub to eventually become natively cross-compatible. There's no real reason it couldn't be.
@wonkothesane @TechConnectify the hope I have is just in the board of directors (or whatever it's called) at Bluesky. Mike Masnick in particular is pretty bull-headed when it comes to opposing corporate nonsense.
Number6 
Just went to a bluesky "tweet". Couldn't see it because it requires you to have an account on BS.
How does anyone push accounts off a federated system?
Eve Ventually@number6 Random hostile behavior on other people's posts is one way Fediverse drives people away. Trying to push one's own norms as inviolate rules onto others is another.
Koos Swart@TechConnectify @wonkothesane I also got complaints from a regional server who said every post of mine got reported for no reason so they limited my account. I moved to the big one in hopes they have decent policies, but I don't post much here.
This is pretty ridiculous considering who I am and what I'm doing.
This is pretty ridiculous considering who I am and what I'm doing.
Pol@TechConnectify @wonkothesane just saw a new brilliant youtube that argues that the friction (work to put in) is good and necessary: https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA
Algorithms are breaking how we think
@pol_9000 You, uh, might want to look a little farther up this thread.
pockets
Triply🐰🐰🐰@TechConnectify @pol_9000 I think Pol was being snarky. In some ways because Mastodon is harder to use that makes it a better platform.
That said, Mastodon is very much a labor of love. You had said computing is a solved problem, yet here is a very real problem that needs to be addressed: Making a usable decentralized social media platform! There's no large money interests developing it, and that's one of the reasons why it is difficult to use.
🅱🅻🆄🅴🅱️Little confused when you say culture that isn't trigger happy to push big creators off the platform.
So from my perspective, I have shared your video in two places and star'd the post.
I don't have optics on any aggressive actions towards you, but I'm also not looking THAT hard. In what ways are people trying to push you off?
OldGeek@BlueBee I think if you go to his posts he explains what the experience has been on Mastodon:
https://mas.to/@TechConnectify/112995453946857071
Technology Connections (@TechConnectify@mas.to)
@SymTrkl@anarres.family I have argued many times, and will continue to do so, that one of the biggest problems Mastodon has is that other people cannot see a lot of the crap that I see, AND there aren't any effective ways for the crowd to reinforce good behavior and discourage bad behavior. Until people sit with that reality, this simply isn't a functional social media tool for me.
Ah, I didn't realize there was more that he had spoken about.
That is one thing (of many) I am frustrated by with social media. The sort of disjointed nature of it. He had made the arguments in the past, but it wasn't in THAT post.
alcinnzI'm not sure what else can be done except begin regulating posts, but a central regulator is obviously bad. Too much power in too few hands.
I think we should probably have our own review structure of people kind of like steam does for games. But you get to say who's reviews you trust and you ignore everyone else's.
Where you and me and other people can say if we trust someone or not and then if you trust them their opinion of people affects the trust levels of others. And then allow people to be sortable by your personal trust levels for them.
I don't know if I'm explaining that well, but I don't want to spend too much time on it right now. Hopefully it gives the jist of the idea. If someone is a troll, I don't want to see them. But I don't trust a giant corporation to tell me who is and isn't a troll. YouTube surfaced Jordan Peterson to me and that man is an idiot.
So much of the pain people feel reading comments would be alleviated if we had a bit more proof required before allowing people to take up air time. I'm not saying turn people off, but label them differently, trolls shouldn't show up the same as someone who will engage with you with care.
I really only trust who I trust.
If you say sentiment analysis I'm now trusting the software and the writer of the software.
I would prefer people's opinions, and especially those who I trust.
Just allow me to say if I trust people or not and allow others to subscribe to that trust or not.
And allow me on the fly to disagree with someone else's trust. Someone shows up as gold trust with a flurry of bad takes. Let me override and say I don't need to hear them anymore.
This isn't context collapse lol.
And the reason why I'm talking about video games is because video games are less complex to review than people, and if you can't write a program that can review them, then you can't write a program that can review people.
On how this relates to his issue, he is saying that the problem is he gets 1 to 1 good to bad takes. A big part of this is that he has no method of sorting these takes. They are all viewed equally. So no matter if it's a well respected scientist or a troll, they all look the same.
Some method of determining trust is required, but if you give this to a single entity like with Blue sky it's too much power for an individual entity to have. But it still needs to be solved as the original poster has stated.
We have a giant pool of very capable reviewers who could help the larger creators sort through people and find who they should probably be listening to, but they lack the levers to provide that service.
Evan@BlueBee Not sure if you are aware, but the “show me the proof…” response is typically viewed as a “reply guy” approach and is a form of sealioning
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
I just started following TC and have seen his posts about people giving him grief on Mastodon. It may be worth scrolling back through his feed a bit before asking him to do the work to prove his experience to you
David Whittemore@TechConnectify I'm in the middle of your 'tube video. Great observations.
My complaint with masto is that even years later, my feed is still only populated with people I manually tracked from that place - I wish there were some sort of "for you", as even seeing stuff boosted by friends doesn't lead to much new discovery. Maybe it is just a problem of someone with a smallish following count. Not having network-wide search is the real deficiency.
'tube subscriptions. Since I decline to have a google account, I accomplish the manual "subscribe" solution via my own "tube feeder" software - just an external website that tracks select channel ids. Works great.
Now - how to get my kid to sit through your well thought-out Cloud Bad video?
My complaint with masto is that even years later, my feed is still only populated with people I manually tracked from that place - I wish there were some sort of "for you", as even seeing stuff boosted by friends doesn't lead to much new discovery. Maybe it is just a problem of someone with a smallish following count. Not having network-wide search is the real deficiency.
'tube subscriptions. Since I decline to have a google account, I accomplish the manual "subscribe" solution via my own "tube feeder" software - just an external website that tracks select channel ids. Works great.
Now - how to get my kid to sit through your well thought-out Cloud Bad video?
Walop@david
You can follow hashtags. And you should use hashtags on messages, because people follow hashtags to see messages regarding certain topics also from people who they do not follow.
Groups are another thing that exists.
MHeezy@david @TechConnectify
I'm new here, decided to try it out because of its mention in the video.
Is the "explore" page not effective at finding new stuff?
Solarbird 
@MHeezy @david It's not amazing. But! Here, I wrote up some starter tips on how new people can fill out their feed. People do seem to like them:
https://mastodon.murkworks.net/@moira/113484112202118788
Welcome and good luck!
Solarbird :flag_cascadia: (@moira@mastodon.murkworks.net)
Attached: 1 image I'm definitely seeing new followers. Hi! Thanks for coming here. I know it's fiddly but I think it's worth it. Here's the most important tip I can give you: \🥳/ HASHTAGS \🥳/ Like old Twitter, this place lives on hashtags. Here's how to use them: 1) Put tags on EVERYTHING you don't want hidden. 1A) Seriously. Everything. Keep them appropriate! But. 2) FOLLOW hashtags. That's a thing you can do here. You can follow a hashtag like you can follow a person. Type in the search box, select it, then click follow. 3) Whenever you see someone interesting on that hashtag? Follow them. Follow people WITH ABANDON. Unfollow if it doesn't work out, that's okay here! That's it. Welcome! #twitter #x #BlueSky #TwitterMigration #mastotips
woe2you@david @TechConnectify The trick is following hashtags as well as people.
eblu@TechConnectify @wonkothesane Alright, ramble warning. TL;DR you're right and more people on here should be doing something about it.
I honestly think that more people should be lighting a fire under Mastodon for this. There are plenty of improvements that have been proposed to it going back years but a lot of them have been ignored under the "benevolent dictator for life" model, which Mastodon is only now preparing to move on from. It's resulted in it falling far behind and letting Bluesky run laps around it effortlessly. That and there really needs to be more UX people in FOSS.
As for the culture, someone higher up really needs to start taking a harder stance against the constant scolding that some people do. Yelling at someone to content-warn a post under something that the original poster didn't even know was a problem or condescendingly saying that someone should switch to Linux for the apparent crime of using Windows, even for reasons outside of their control (e.g. not everything works under WINE or a VM), is a huge issue that somehow hasn't been addressed.
And, well, there's the everything else about decentralized, federated networks that result in a very awkward experience for those coming from centralized platforms, but Mastodon seems to be working on that so I can at least give them that. Maybe the "it's scraping our posts, white techbro" sect can chill at least a little bit once FASPs get implemented.
pir4t3sp4c3ship@TechConnectify what tools are you missing here?
Shanie MyrsTear@pirat3spaceship @TechConnectify I'm sure I can start this conversation with the fact that complete context awareness of replies still does not exist.
On a smaller server? Not as much connectivity? No or few replies to OP. And why? Because they haven't implemented basic context feeding of replies to servers for 8 years.
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/32615
It's taken 8 years for someone external to the project to do the dirty work, and it's still not incorporated.
@shanie thanks, that explains a lot
volkrisToday I noticed that @TechConnectify has an account here in addition to #BlueSky and I was just about to ask how the two platforms compared for that sort of usage. And then I saw that my question had already been answered 🙂
I think this is a very useful bit of feedback for #fediverse / #mastodon from exactly the sort of content creator that a lot of you want to see coming to this platform.
I would only add one other thought, I'm suspecting the character count limits between interfaces to the two platforms might also be significant to TC.
Otherwise I had been wondering about whether it's better to have accounts on both platforms or just to use those gateway services between the two.
(Also, I don't know, maybe I should be doing a quote post with this, because it does seem to break the stream of conversation, but I don't know)
Syphist 
@TechConnectify we don't push popular creators off the platform, we just hold them to the same expectations as everyone else. Things like alt text is very important here and there are cultural nuances that need to be learned. Guess what though, I learned them just fine by listening and changing my behavior to accommodate that.
Cowboy Who?@TechConnectify so the first time you said this, I had a knee-jerk reaction to it. But then I thought about it, and damn it if ya an't right about it.
I like your shoelaces@TechConnectify @wonkothesane would you say that the context-free drive-bys are more common on Bluesky than here or about the same? Because I don't think there's a discovery algorithm on Mastodon pushing that churn, just reposts and the global timeline.
Earnest question because I'm curious.
UncleRico@TechConnectify @wonkothesane No kidding. Made a similar response to someone yesterday and got completely attacked.