Bruno ➡️ @bruno@cybre.space @brunodias@mastodon.social

[Taps on a dial that ranges from "shitposting" to "discourse". A bead of sweat runs down his forehead as the needle vibrates against the red zone of the discourse end.]

I gotta be honest, I'm kind of not so hot for the actual gameplay in NieR: Automata. Maybe I just don't care for that genre of action game, even though I can see it doing a lot of interesting stuff.

Anyway to elaborate on why algorithmic "relevance" sorting in social media timelines is bad:

1. It makes the system opaque, which means that when it fails it's more infuriating/shitty for users
2. Part of the value of home timelines is that you curate them, and curating them is better when you understand how someone's posts will appear when you follow them.
3. Part of the value of public timelines is finding things you didn't know you wanted.

The problems with users splitting into the "right" communities for them, though:

1. Switching instances has way too much friction for anyone with an account that is even a little bit established.

2. Followbots were a mistake, as they make federated TLS indiscriminate rather than a curated reflection of the interests of local users.

People are going to talk about salience-sorting algorithms as a solution to this. Those people are bad, and wrong; algorithms for "relevance" sorting are, I'm pretty convinced, inherently evil.

The real solution is user self-sorting into instances that would operate as communities, which has already happened.

Like, the influx of Argentine Mastodon is very illustrative of this. If you halfway understand Spanish like I do, you'll realize that in actuality most of those toots are actually profoundly banal; whether or not there is a language barrier, they are very much outside the wavelength of Mastodon's OG community. Since at this stage in the network's life, growth comes in bursts that are generated by spots of media attention, this will be a pattern with new large inflows of users.

Picking up a bit on what @u2764 has been talking about...

The public timeline is what gives Mastodon value. It's what allows it to escape the chicken-and-egg trap that prevents new social networks from taking off, by giving the system discoverability.

But, as instances get bigger, the PTL becomes progressively more useless; not just because it accelerates. but because it becomes an anonymous crowd instead of a community. (Cont'd in replies)

I'm getting perilously close to having more followers on here than on bird site.

enterprise.enterprise, an instance where we role-play as our forbesonas. uses a custom codebase written in a variant of COBOL that runs on the JVM on an Oracle server.

I gotta say, Argentine Mastodon's mix of rudeness, thirst, and vague racism isn't the best

My #metasona is the concept of a fernsona, an alter ego that is a plant.

A good meme is like a bubble: You wanna be one of the smart people who get in early, not one of the suckers who are still in late.

Fucking SJW's removed the vagina bones

I'm already hollerin about the anubis

Define "neoliberalism" without looking at Google.

The new Teslas know where you need to go before you do; they read the data surface of your life, drawn from the fog of connected devices around you, and anticipate your needs, even your desires. They take you where you want to go.

His death is ruled a suicide.

remember kids:

shit-taliking corps you've worked for on social media: unprofessional

a large corp not paying vendors/contractors and taking weeks to even respond to inquiries as to why: professional

remember kids:

joking about putting rich people to death for their many crimes: violent

extorting people by threatening to cut off their utilities then giving them inadequate service: not violent