Ecologia Digital“And now, inevitably, half of my #Bluesky timeline is like: oh, we need a service that’s resistant to this sort of shit, something that’s not beholden to capitalist pressure, something that’s queer-friendly…, quickly followed by but don’t say #Mastodon!
Sorry, I’m saying it. We want fucking Mastodon. It’s run by an actual non-profit foundation, none of this “public benefit corporation” bullshit. It’s not subject to creeping network-wide puritanism. Mastodon. Goddammit.”
Lydia Conwell@josemurilo I don't get why social media users have so much aversion to Mastodon. I understand it's expensive for hosting instances and there might be other troubles. But for people who just want to post on social media, there is a real disdain for Mastodon.
And it's probably the fact you have to work a bit to get people to see your posts, and you can post something that gets zero response. There are the attention-hungry types who just can't bear to feel mildly ignored but no matter how much you list the benefits of decentralised social media, people either don't want to listen or seem to want Fedi to fail (which it isn't).
I don't really get it.
Adam DallianceMostly it isn't anything about the actual network, or it's software, or users, because these are mostly users who haven't even tried it so can't know about that.
It must be based on reputation alone, because that's all the dismissive person has to go on, having never tried it.
The reputation here is that it's got loads of busybodies who tell you off for failure to content-warn or alt-text or pick the right instance and its full of reply-guys and maybe racists and is its got the stink of nerds all over it and only uncool geeks go there not all the top cool influencers and best brands.
The reputation is not entirely undeserved.
@pre I messaged Media Lens to see if they would set up an account on Fedi and they told me that their tech guy warned of security risks with Mastodon -- which I don't understand. You're posting publicly some words and links. What are the security risks? Are these risks better or worse than publicly posting on Twitter?
They also mentioned that Caitlin Johnstone's account was suspended on Mastodon. First, her suspension was probably deserved, and second neither Media Lens nor Caitlin Johnstone understood that her account was suspended from mastodon.social, not *all* of Mastodon.
You recommend fedi and all you get is boo hoo it's a bit something else, and yeah, none of my cool friends are on it so I won't bother.
Maybe it's hesitancy, like vaccine hesitancy. People will do it if they know someone else has done it.
@lydiaconwell You ask people to do the work of figuring out Mastodon and they look for reasons not to have to do that work I guess.
If you run your own Mastodon instance then you have to do security updates. Maybe they're thinking that? Most media orgs probably ought to run their own for Media Lens are too small for that really.
Johnstone was indeed banned, and she got quite indignant and that did puts lots of people off I guess. Not knowing that the whole point is you can just register somewhere less intolerant of your particular rant tendencies.
If there were a hundred times more users already here, then yeah, they'd find ways to do the work instead of ways to avoid it.