Renata 🇨🇦🐈Newsflash: boring white guy thinks fedi is bad because people here are not interested in his AI content
Anyway, Happy First Contact Day everyone.
I don’t even TRY (not my goal in life, I use mastodon for fun) and never had a problem with “engagement”
Here’s a picture of Agata for engagement purposes.
(Updated to add alt text)
#catsofmastodon #Cats #tuxedocat
(Updated to add alt text)
#catsofmastodon #Cats #tuxedocat
Deborah Preuss, pcc 🇨🇦@renata @mayintoronto your alt text is a winner! 🎉
@deborahh @mayintoronto I enjoy writing alt text
Jean-François Mezei
Peluche Cero
DragonFlame
PointlessOne 
@jfmezei @renata It’s the other way around. Cat pictures are allowed any day of week and on Saturday they’re mandatory. You have to pay your cat tax every Saturday. In some jurisdictions on #WhiskersWednesday as well.
KasTasI have said this before:
A lot of journalists, influencers, etc have a problem with fedi because they don’t bother understanding the format
They’re used to platforms that work like this:
- share hot take
- receive likes
The fedi works differently:
- Engage with the community
- Connect with like minded folks regularly so they see you as a peer
- Eventually share your hot take
- Get responses
- Interact
And there you have it. That’s how you make friends instead of just followers.
Mauricio Teixeira🐧
@renata
No lies detected.
No lies detected.
datum (n=1)@renata And doing so in good faith (and blocking bad faith folks!) makes fedi-conversations meaningful exchanges of ideas, instead of just outlets and sites of parasociality!
Yora@renata It's not even about reach. It's about monetization.
Without ads, there's no real money to be made other than advertising the things you made and are selling.
Without ads, there's no real money to be made other than advertising the things you made and are selling.
@yora Yes! If you’re not buying something then what’s the point
Alan Langford 🇨🇦🧤🧊摏@renata It's funny, that's how Twitter worked in the early days, and all but a very few of the friends I made in that era tried Mastodon for a while and then went back. Some of this I understand, they've built businesses around the platform, but others I fear have become addicted to being enraged, and rage farming has an incredibly short half-life here.
@alan It sure makes people addicted and it’s very scary to think about it. I also know people who had the same behaviour and it makes me sad.
@renata Sad and frustrating. I've tried to pry a few from the clutches of the dopamine feedback loop, and what I get is "I can't. All my fellow dopamine feedback loop addicts are here with me." 🤦
Don't Sweat The Technique ✊
Gaëtan Perrault@renata I think this goes both ways though. Journalists and influencers are inherently on these platforms to generate some form of monetization.
Typically this is some form of advertising revenue share. Otherwise they have to use this platform as marketing. Which is also really just advertising.
Doing those things well requires algorithmic control and reliable metrics. Both things which this fediverse platform doesn't support.
The lack of those things makes this a kind of useless platform for influencers and journalists. Not only do they have to do community engagement, but they can't use those numbers for advances on their next book.
You can do Cory Doctorow numbers, but you can't do Kim Kardashian numbers.
We could say some of those people have problems here, but I think it's more accurate to say that this place just isn't really for them.
@gatesvp They were on Twitter before those things were available so I wonder why it it’s only a requirement now, and why they can’t use the fedi as an extra outlet - many of us aren’t asking them to abandon everything else, just to diversify?
(But no matter the reasoning I judge people who publish on pedo platform)
@renata totally agreed that they can be judged for publishing on Twitter.
But if they were on Twitter before the rise of ads, they also existed in a different environment. If you were a journalist in 2010, your core revenue came from the website / publication. Twitter was a marketing channel, not your revenue base. YouTube was a supplement, but not your core income.
But if you're a journalist today, most people have ad blockers and nobody is subscribing. Your website isn't paying your bills. So you suddenly depend on Substack and YouTube and Instagram for revenue sources. Your sponsors need externally validated view counts, they need reach numbers, and they're the ones paying the bills.
I wonder why it's a requirement now...
It's all the stuff above. Unless you have an independent funding source, you cannot really execute on the functions of an influencer using this platform. This platform won't help you pay your journalist bills. 🤷🏻♂️
PS: I'm obviously okay with this setup, that's part of why I'm here. 🎉
But I also understand a lot of people who aren't here, because this place is just not for them. 🤷🏻♂️
Deb Nam-Krane
Arnd Layer@renata
I believe it’s not only about likes. I remember that Twitter also showed a view count and I felt a little withdrawal when I switched to mastodon. So as long as there aren’t servers that offer this statistic, it could be another factor.
Especially if you factor in a corporate environment where only things you can measure are valid.
Referrals may also be harder to measure because of the multitude of servers.
WTL
Transbian_Arsonists (Seraphine)@renata when the social media platform is about being social and not parasocial
- posted by rose
- posted by rose
@Transbian_Arsonists I love this
Robotistry@renata I don't think it's an understanding problem.
I think it's a fundamental goal incompatibility - by definition, journalism and influencing are one-way streets, with the creator on one side and the recipients (success measured by how many) on the other.
If your job performance is measured by "how many people saw this" because you are paid based on "how many people saw this," a platform that measures success in "how interesting was the subsequent conversation" and that is incapable of establishing a reliable proxy for "how many people saw this" simply isn't going to be a good fit.
I don't think journalists and influencers are looking for social interaction on social media. They're looking for an audience.
Dave bauer@renata Yes, interestingly this is how I have interacted in online communities since the 1980s! I naively thought that's what everyone did. Well at least I made a lot of friends.
Ellejay 