Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸
Evan Prodromou
Beebles
- 1 Followers
- 12 Following
- 84 Posts
This is inspired by @kissane investigation asking folks at Bluesky why they left Mastodon. It's pretty clear, at least in that initial November wave, that a lot of people were quickly made to feel quite unwelcome. The tech stuff is relatively easily fixed, but if Mastodon has a reputation as a place where you can expect to be told you're too dumb to figure out "the rules" then that's on us, it's a big problem, and we need to fix it.
@kissane
Great research & insights!
This is a vital phrase: "Realistically, cross-instance attempts to push people to CW non-extreme content are a no-go at scale and punish the most sensitive and anxious new users the most. "
Also - " benefit from having cues built into their instance’s implementation of the core [Fediverse] software" - This is also a major thing we're missing on onboarding users.
For example, I hadn't realized it's good etiquitte to untag people who the message isn't targetted to from a threaded conversation, until Evan had mentioned untagging a prominent figure from a long conversation that was no longer related to the original point.
Things like that, not just CW, but also boosting is better than liking (and not penalized by the algo like on FB) - that people don't know unless they're told - and software devs or instance admins could either have a write-up to link to - or even better having mini onboarding prompts.
Great research & insights!
This is a vital phrase: "Realistically, cross-instance attempts to push people to CW non-extreme content are a no-go at scale and punish the most sensitive and anxious new users the most. "
Also - " benefit from having cues built into their instance’s implementation of the core [Fediverse] software" - This is also a major thing we're missing on onboarding users.
For example, I hadn't realized it's good etiquitte to untag people who the message isn't targetted to from a threaded conversation, until Evan had mentioned untagging a prominent figure from a long conversation that was no longer related to the original point.
Things like that, not just CW, but also boosting is better than liking (and not penalized by the algo like on FB) - that people don't know unless they're told - and software devs or instance admins could either have a write-up to link to - or even better having mini onboarding prompts.
@kissane @anarchopunk_girl
A reputation system gives me alarm bells - China comes to mind. Who is going to set the reputation points, and set the rules? Instance/server-wise, yes it makes sense for each admin to set their own rules - and may the best server win by people voting with their presence on that server. But Fediverse-wise? No society is ever ready, because that's a still a form of domination and control. A co-op is still the best way - and again, servers that like each other will federate with each other - but a standardized reputation system /never/ goes as planned - people will always find a way to become the Judge, Jury and Executioner when deployed on a massive scale.
Instead of systemized thinking, we can look to nature how ecosystems balance themselves organically without invading other ecosystems. Left to her devices, nature will eventually cull out or adapt to an invasive species - if humans don't meddle. Each local environment will regulate if there's good guidelines up front, like you had mentioned in the article. Take for example, where one culture has a certain hand gesture for 'ok', but another culture the same hand gesture is offensive. If we translate that to a global scale, who will say which culture is correct? It comes back to localities - just like natural ecosystems- and that's the fediverse strengths. A reputation system will just further domination and control if someone manages to code it in and normalize it - where again, the minority becomes outliers.
Sorry for the long response - I'm just writing out as these things come to mind, not at all a planned response.
All of that said - a search engine that just shows the most amount of hashtags used isn't a bad idea - rather than crawling the data, it just crawls the hashtags and saves those, instead of the full content.
A reputation system gives me alarm bells - China comes to mind. Who is going to set the reputation points, and set the rules? Instance/server-wise, yes it makes sense for each admin to set their own rules - and may the best server win by people voting with their presence on that server. But Fediverse-wise? No society is ever ready, because that's a still a form of domination and control. A co-op is still the best way - and again, servers that like each other will federate with each other - but a standardized reputation system /never/ goes as planned - people will always find a way to become the Judge, Jury and Executioner when deployed on a massive scale.
Instead of systemized thinking, we can look to nature how ecosystems balance themselves organically without invading other ecosystems. Left to her devices, nature will eventually cull out or adapt to an invasive species - if humans don't meddle. Each local environment will regulate if there's good guidelines up front, like you had mentioned in the article. Take for example, where one culture has a certain hand gesture for 'ok', but another culture the same hand gesture is offensive. If we translate that to a global scale, who will say which culture is correct? It comes back to localities - just like natural ecosystems- and that's the fediverse strengths. A reputation system will just further domination and control if someone manages to code it in and normalize it - where again, the minority becomes outliers.
Sorry for the long response - I'm just writing out as these things come to mind, not at all a planned response.
All of that said - a search engine that just shows the most amount of hashtags used isn't a bad idea - rather than crawling the data, it just crawls the hashtags and saves those, instead of the full content.
@tromino @[email protected] @xerz
Zoom WAAAAY into the image - if it was "faked" the background would've been pixelated - unless you think they had the time in the middle of a major rebrand + migration to create an entire mockup down to the details from scratch.
For anyone who uses photoshop, or even AI tools, to edit images, they'll say that it takes a ton of time to make it look right when zooming in.
It's also incredibly difficult to find the right fonts, and even match the sizes and proper font weight. They'd also have to copy and paste just the tiny circle image of the avatars, and put it at just the right alignment and spacing with the username and timestamp. I mean, this would be heck of piece of hellart to create and get it literally pixel-perfect. In the middle of a rebrand and migration.
https://blob.jortage.com/blobs/1/6b4/16b44c45b26e453a8a5542b7f085d00766aadcf4a63d69bba6ab2f662a3bb50332abf99c4dab1866d6bb8a0f43eeb8d580150e06446916b5eb746267a8879b11
Zoom WAAAAY into the image - if it was "faked" the background would've been pixelated - unless you think they had the time in the middle of a major rebrand + migration to create an entire mockup down to the details from scratch.
For anyone who uses photoshop, or even AI tools, to edit images, they'll say that it takes a ton of time to make it look right when zooming in.
It's also incredibly difficult to find the right fonts, and even match the sizes and proper font weight. They'd also have to copy and paste just the tiny circle image of the avatars, and put it at just the right alignment and spacing with the username and timestamp. I mean, this would be heck of piece of hellart to create and get it literally pixel-perfect. In the middle of a rebrand and migration.
https://blob.jortage.com/blobs/1/6b4/16b44c45b26e453a8a5542b7f085d00766aadcf4a63d69bba6ab2f662a3bb50332abf99c4dab1866d6bb8a0f43eeb8d580150e06446916b5eb746267a8879b11
@kissane all of which is to say:
1) We should be encouraging people to get their own domain early in the onboarding process.
2) Fediverse software should support bringing your own domain. Takahē does it; others should follow suit.
3) Fediverse software should support both Webfinger accounts ([email protected]) and DNS hostname accounts (user.domain.example). That way, everyone gets a domain name, free, right away, but somewhat less under their own control.
@anirvan you're missing the OG of true microblogging - Tumblr
@SarraceniaWilds @mastodonmigration @bynkii @Rachel_Thorn @BlackAzizAnansi
It would be worth people becoming 'curators' rather than 'creators' for their localities and niches - perfect for introverts who hate the creation side of social but love sharing the love! Make it a thing like 'influencers' - actually giving it a dedicated role in society, to be considered a curator in the Fediverse.
I plan to make a few curating accounts once I have my firefish server up, for classicism architects and designers, and generally people sharing their home renovations - having people centralize content will make it easier to be found - it's just a different approach that needs to be adopted, but I believe it will pickup - it has to since there's no global search.
Plus - the Fediverse is ripe for curation - it's the perfect environment to build "authority" as a directory account since there's no global search to compete with, and boosting is easy and encouraged, compared to IG, where most non-political creatives live. And Fediverse encourages individual connections rather than blind mass outreach, so Curators could very well become a trust authority in the Fediverse, by outlining their niches and boosting policies up front.
It would be worth people becoming 'curators' rather than 'creators' for their localities and niches - perfect for introverts who hate the creation side of social but love sharing the love! Make it a thing like 'influencers' - actually giving it a dedicated role in society, to be considered a curator in the Fediverse.
I plan to make a few curating accounts once I have my firefish server up, for classicism architects and designers, and generally people sharing their home renovations - having people centralize content will make it easier to be found - it's just a different approach that needs to be adopted, but I believe it will pickup - it has to since there's no global search.
Plus - the Fediverse is ripe for curation - it's the perfect environment to build "authority" as a directory account since there's no global search to compete with, and boosting is easy and encouraged, compared to IG, where most non-political creatives live. And Fediverse encourages individual connections rather than blind mass outreach, so Curators could very well become a trust authority in the Fediverse, by outlining their niches and boosting policies up front.
Shoq 🌿In 2014, I said this on Twitter ⏵
"I wish more people would understand that holding the media accountable is just as important as holding government accountable."
It's probably the biggest reason I have the followers I have. But I wish we all heeded me more a bit more back then. I was more correct than even I knew at the time.
