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.
I think if we’re honest with ourselves, the “service” most reporters provide on social media is entirely self-serving. A one-way firehose of signal boosting and self promotion.
“Look at me! I wrote this story. Click on it!”
And then you ask them a question, or have a correction, and nobody reads it, because Wired doesn’t care about building a community, just reaching a consumer. It’s fire and forget.
We already have a tool for that, it’s RSS. What value does reposting a link here provide?
Oo, interesting.
… I want to talk through stuff with people i reasonably trust, with enough variety to have many opinions, with some social norms so disagreements don’t spiral.
That’s both a LOT and something we’ve been doing since language, yesno? I’ve decided that online groups are “easy come easy go” by nature.
I’m still on some old timey forums for specific interests, with more or less “just friends” structure stuck onto them. More blew up. Moderation is hard.
@clew @OliviaVespera I miss phpbb forums 😭 Im always thinking about starting one again but I’m not sure if it would see any use.
Is it that the internet is a different beast, or that my imagination has become limited?
EVHaste
Olivia Vespera
clew