It’s been a weird couple days; I keep running into this talking point that “journalists won’t use Mastodon unless we incentivize engagement farming”.

Meanwhile I’m having a *great* experience here, because I use it to— I dunno— actually talk to people and form relationships?

I reject the premise that mastodon isn’t useful for reporters. I think it’s more accurate that modern news orgs use social media in purely extractive ways.

You might get more reporters that way, but you won’t like them.

@Haste Fuck all of that engagement bullshit. Those parasites should stay hell away from here. I don’t miss them. I don’t want them. Anything even remotely like that shit that was on commercial social media I block with extreme prejudice.

@oberstenzian @Haste and if you look at the average news site, it's filled with trackers (hint - there's no such thing as an "essential cookie") and clickbait ads.

Block JavaScript and most paywalls stop blocking you. The ones that use JavaScript to insert story contenf, you can find alternatives elsewhere.