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”
I 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.
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.
Nike Leonhard@Nike_Leonhard @renata I'm torn on that. In practice, what politicians want is an audience. But in theory, they succeed or fail on how well they reflect voters' wants, which means they need to establish channels to gather information on how well they're reflecting that and what things they're missing.
Traditionally, polling and fundraising success have been the main mechanisms to collect feedback before elections, with advertising and rallies that attempt to modify peoples' wants through fear and belonging so they align with the group. (Trump has been unusually successful by using trial and error with rally responses and social media posts and doubling down on whatever resonates.)
There are scale and permanency problems too. Instead of a temporary army of door-knockers during elections, you'd need a semi-permanent staff on Mastodon establishing a conduit to the politician.