@m3mnoch Having a "follow suggestion" would be fun. Like YouTube channels have a spot on your page to promote other channels you like.

Or an opt-in function to show who you most RT.

I think there's lots of ways to get around the count.

@nolan @GinnyMcQueen should defenetly visit toot.cafe one day ;)

@nolan I'm glad it's being discussed. There is literally no value to a public user count. :yum:

@GinnyMcQueen Most surprising to me was that basically everyone was in favor of it. I think we're just tired of feeling like 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-class citizens on social media.

@nolan I used to get jobs based on how many followers I had.

It's a gross system. It must be stopped.

@GinnyMcQueen @nolan Agreed, me too. To be frank it's part of personal branding. There is, however, something gratifying about thinking people follow you because you say interesting/pithy/smart/whatever things.

@trishussey @GinnyMcQueen It felt real good to watch my follower count hit 1k and then 2k and then 5k and then I would go to confs/meetups and people wouldn't talk to me because they were too nervous. 😞

@nolan @GinnyMcQueen so true. Ditto for me. And it's frankly very strange to have complete strangers rush up to your with glee saying "I love what you write! I follow all your stuff"

Cult of personality & faux-celebrity. I'll fully admit I enjoyed the perks. And I had a chance to do a lot great things because of it. Time to do it better though.

@trishussey @nolan We need to be careful how we measure popularity, and value for that matter.

@nolan @trishussey (I'm a social media director, or was until this year. I know what's what.)

@trishussey @nolan @GinnyMcQueen veryin favor of this idea!

@GinnyMcQueen @nolan truer words never spoke...

@nolan @GinnyMcQueen @asm please adopt this feature request on mastodon.cc #nomorefollowercounts

@abentleywrites @GinnyMcQueen @nolan

I'm certainly open to this idea. You can voice your opinion here: https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/1660 in the main repo. If they decide to go forward with it, I'll pull in the changes :)

@asm @abentleywrites @nolan Considering the amount of harassment I got from even mentioning it BECAUSE of my follower count, I'm not going to be going anywhere else to talk about it any time soon.

@GinnyMcQueen @asm @abentleywrites toot.cafe users are almost unanimously in favor of this feature, and a majority of us are web developers/designers. We'll very likely submit a PR soon.

@live Right? It's lovely.

@trishussey I think there are other options for finding people.

Having a "follow suggestion" would be fun. Like YouTube channels have a spot on your page to promote other channels you like.

Or an opt-in function to show who you most RT.

I think there's lots of ways to get around the count.

@GinnyMcQueen Yes, all of those would be great. Maybe I'm overly hopeful, but I'm hoping we can get a mulligan for something post-Twitter. I believe this is a moment like when AOL and Compuserve left the walled garden for the wider internet.

@TheNicktator Internal numbers are fine and useful. Public, not so much. :)

@GinnyMcQueen

Hopefully this gets traction, honestly hope it goes site wide as well.

@GinnyMcQueen a lot of the stuff in that episode was making me uncomfortable because I realized how much of the 'follower count' mentality I had internalized.

@staticsafe @GinnyMcQueen That Black Mirror episode hit so close to home for me, it was almost not funny.

Whenever I go to a conf/meetup, I have a rough gauge in my head of everyone's follower count. I could tell you ballpark whether it was 500, 1k, 5k, 20k, etc.

And I'm not the only one; I hear follower counts casually dropped in everyday conversations all the time ("I recently hit 1k," "I can't believe she has 10k", etc.). Abolish it.

@GinnyMcQueen @staticsafe I don't even work in social media; I work in webdev. It permeates everything. Everybody's thinking about it but it's rarely acknowledged overtly.

@nolan @staticsafe When your having to take direction for a brand like "use only model-esque white women in the social media images" you start plotting the end of the system.

@GinnyMcQueen noped out of Black Mirror after the misogynistic grotesquerie of the pilot, personally

@GinnyMcQueen ;)

@GinnyMcQueen *fake smiles* PLEASE FOLLOW ME!!! <3<3<3

@GinnyMcQueen

Hated in the Nation
A million merits
San Junipero
Nose Dive
The Waldo moment

Best Black mirror episodes

I've worked in social media since 2007.

You have no idea how people are manipulating you and turning you into a commodity. And you don't see how your behavior is being conditioned to keep power structures intact.

It's bad. It's really bad. On a societal level. It's one of those issues you don't think about and then it hits you how damaging it is.

TL;DR - public follower counts have no benefit and a lot of detriment

@GinnyMcQueen are there any social media platforms that don't do this that you know of? 🤔

@violetoctagon Snapchat

@violetoctagon @GinnyMcQueen I had a ex-friend try to tell me that racism still exists only because we continue to talk about it. Which is downright bullshit. Shitty hegemonic power structures lost power and influence when you talk about them, so keep doing your thing.

@GinnyMcQueen oooh hadn't thought of that one

@violetoctagon Snapchat fails at being able to find users as well, and they're platform is not something to take direction from.

@GinnyMcQueen yeah totally it seems a lot more private than most others and basically relies on other social media platforms to spread which is kinda unique i guess

@violetoctagon It was built to be a messaging platform, not a social media platform. It's a weird anomaly.

My big issue was algorithms being the death of creativity, but follower counts are the death of humanity.

Or not. I don't mean to be alarmist. https://mastodon.social/media/RfBnIFbI6PLMhJNDJ0Y

Keep me updated with this because I do not quite understand how this would be decided by instance. :grin:

@GinnyMcQueen ok,ok I'll follow you! sheesh

@GinnyMcQueen Really interesting.

Never *really* put much thought into this, but you are so right.

It also contributes to this ever-growing list of reasons why #mastodon is such a refreshing concept without reinventing the wheel! 🍍

There are multiple aspects to this. Be open to hearing other viewpoints. Empathize. Take sociology as well as technology into account.

There could be other answers to this we haven't thought of. I think getting away from the commodified follower count is vital, but there could be many ways to do it. And many ways of addressing the issues it might cause.

Let's think and listen to others in different situations. :relaxed:

We've all been thinking about this issue for different amounts of time with different experience. :pineapple:

I think "this harmful thing protects me from this other harmful thing" is a topic of discussion, not an answer to either problem.

Thank you to everyone who did not @ me screaming in all caps about follower counts. Discussion is nice, your screaming is not.

Unless you were like "HEY I REALLY APPRECIATE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE SEVERE ISSUES WITH FOLLOWER COUNTS AS A WOMAN WHO HAS EXPERIENCED YEARS OF ABUSE AND WOULD LIKE TO DISCUSS FURTHER HOW TO APPROACH THIS AND OTHER ISSUES TO KEEP USERS SAFE."

@GinnyMcQueen Your thoughts are important to me!