So this is interesting...
Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz @taylorlorenz, who is famous in these circles for being banned from Twitter then reinstated after much outcry, has conducted an experiment to determine if view counts on Twitter are legitimate.
Surprise, she presents proof that they are not, as shown in the Tweet screenshot below.
Many stay on Twitter because they believe that their "engagement" is higher, but now it seems like they can not trust the numbers.
Kudos to the New York Public Library (#NYPL) for mining this vein of gold beneath our feet.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/epzyde/librarians-are-finding-thousands-of-books-no-longer-protected-by-copyright-law
"NYPL has been reviewing the US #Copyright Office’s official…records for [books] whose copyrights haven’t been renewed…The books in question were published between 1923 & 1964, before changes to US copyright law removed the requirement for rights holders to renew their copyrights…Around 65 -75% of rights holders opted not to renew their copyrights."
I just hopped over to the bird site to check something, and my "For You" timeline is entirely empty. Not a single post, other than the block of "recommended for you" accounts to follow.
Why people continue to use that site, I have no clue.
If you've been waiting for full-text #search on #Mastodon, please go to #TootFinder and sign in. The more, the merrier.
https://www.tootfinder.ch/
Thanks to @buercher for building it.
It's opt-in, not opt-out. It respects Mastodon culture and doesn't index accounts that don't sign in.
That means the index might be small if we don't spread the word.