Nicholas Romyn @nromyn@mastodon.social

Back when I was active on Usenet it was considered pretty normal to have house rules for any newsgroup, you were also expected to refrain from posting long enough to notice and learn the unspoken customs (this was called "lurking").

Nowadays people see it as an orchestrated attack against free speech, shout references to 1984, and threaten to move elsewhere.

Yet the ones asking us all to behave politely are called "hypersensitive"?

One of the beautiful things about Mastodon, and GNU social in general, is that we have the opportunity to avoid a particular vicious feedback loops that lead to social media noise.

Buffer, bless their hearts, have an article describing exactly how this failure state occurs:
https://blog.bufferapp.com/social-media-frequency-guide

If you're treating your feed as a marketing billboard, you end up tooting more - but if everyone does it... Signal/noise ratios quickly spiral into asinine territory.

From watching people on Mastodon it is extremely evident people want communities / conversations around topics.

So, we are currently invading mastodon.social on two fronts - French social media, and the migration of #infosec from twitter :P

We should probably make @Gargron 's life easier and help the guy out; https://www.patreon.com/user?u=619786

Please boost! (it's the new RT, right?)

So, about this Mastodon thing (still learning):
- mastodon.social is to Mastodon what gmail.com is to email,
- like in email @usernames are only unique within a given server,
- MAXLEN=500 here,
- RTFM: https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/tree/master/docs
- enough people already asked about end-to-end encrypted DMs. There are no.
- no one asked about e2e signed toots though yet?
- if you believe you're trustworthy enough, consider using the ✅ character to let others know they can trust you.

I think that's why people get excited over these things. New platforms these days are the only way to get that kick that the internet as a whole had ~15-20 years ago. A place without "normies" where everything is possible, social interactions are being redefined and people feel connected on some deep socio-philosophical level.

What year is it? Nelly Furtado and Jamiroquai are releasing new music. A bunch of people have jumped on some new social networking platform. Power Rangers, Beauty and The Beast, and Ghost in the Shell in movie theaters. wat.

So far the award goes to @Viss for having the single most ANNOYING avatar on @Mastodon!