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@temporality @jd I think that activists who want to have broad impact staying on Twitter has plenty of very good reasons; the reach and impact of social platforms vary! You should be where your audience for affecting change is! I have not yet seen evidence that Mastodon is where you want to be if affecting social change is your primary goal, which is one of the things I explicitly feel for myself.

https://mastodon.social/@crschmidt/109 314070471600552

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@temporality @jd I think that activists who want to have broad impact staying on Twitter has plenty of very good reasons; the reach and impact of social platforms vary! You should be where your audience for affecting change is! I have not yet seen evidence that Mastodon is where you want to be if affecting social change is your primary goal, which is one of the things I explicitly feel for myself.

https://mastodon.social/@crschmidt/109 314070471600552

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@digifox I think that Twitter's drive for engagement is a two-edged sword.

The engagement success from random interesting posts is what moved me from being a rare/occasional tweeter to an aggressive user of Twitter in 2019. It is a key way that I have grown my local political influence.

At a certain scale, it also obviously brings problems--spam and abuse as well as context collapse being the two big categories.

Threading that needle is hard.

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@digifox I think that Twitter's drive for engagement is a two-edged sword.

The engagement success from random interesting posts is what moved me from being a rare/occasional tweeter to an aggressive user of Twitter in 2019. It is a key way that I have grown my local political influence.

At a certain scale, it also obviously brings problems--spam and abuse as well as context collapse being the two big categories.

Threading that needle is hard.

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@jamuraa Yeah, I think that point is rapidly coming, and I think that the federated nature makes the problem harder, rather than easier. (My go-to example that federated moderation is hard: Alex Jones still has a podcast, despite no longer having a Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook account.)

Defederating with entire servers that are made of bad actors worked fine, but with dozens of servers with thousands of users and open registration, has likely passed the point of solving the problem.

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@jamuraa Yeah, I think that point is rapidly coming, and I think that the federated nature makes the problem harder, rather than easier. (My go-to example that federated moderation is hard: Alex Jones still has a podcast, despite no longer having a Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook account.)

Defederating with entire servers that are made of bad actors worked fine, but with dozens of servers with thousands of users and open registration, has likely passed the point of solving the problem.

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@oxpal those choices were the ones that enabled their scale, yes.

Dreamwidth is a decent example of a social media site that has none of those negative incentives. It came with a somewhat built in userbase/community of people dedicated to the platform. It has industry leading paid account conversion rates, giving it revenue per user few sites can dream of. And it remains extremely niche, and will forever.

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@oxpal those choices were the ones that enabled their scale, yes.

Dreamwidth is a decent example of a social media site that has none of those negative incentives. It came with a somewhat built in userbase/community of people dedicated to the platform. It has industry leading paid account conversion rates, giving it revenue per user few sites can dream of. And it remains extremely niche, and will forever.

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That said, I think that the past 20 years of social media experience have taught some folks about things they want vs don't want in their lives, and I think that experience will inform how people behave.

But eventually Mastodon will have its share of assholes, too. It isn't Twitter that creates assholes; they exist even entirely outside social media. And at some points, choosing between those negative consequences and giving up impact will be the meaningful choice.

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That said, I think that the past 20 years of social media experience have taught some folks about things they want vs don't want in their lives, and I think that experience will inform how people behave.

But eventually Mastodon will have its share of assholes, too. It isn't Twitter that creates assholes; they exist even entirely outside social media. And at some points, choosing between those negative consequences and giving up impact will be the meaningful choice.

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But Mastodon hasn't magically fixed the latter problem; it's just, for the moment, eliminated it by shrinking the total addressable audience size. Which comes with a real cost for people like me who value Twitter because of broad reach and impact!

There is no way that 160 people use my referral codes to buy #ebikes during the Radpower sale based on Mastodon boosts. That reduced impact means this platform loses some utility that Twitter provided for me.

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But Mastodon hasn't magically fixed the latter problem; it's just, for the moment, eliminated it by shrinking the total addressable audience size. Which comes with a real cost for people like me who value Twitter because of broad reach and impact!

There is no way that 160 people use my referral codes to buy #ebikes during the Radpower sale based on Mastodon boosts. That reduced impact means this platform loses some utility that Twitter provided for me.

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I think that smaller, more insulated social communities are largely better for social engagement. It is easier and better to engage with people when you're in a smaller space where people are likely to better understand each other. The context collapse of "viral" tweets is a somewhat fundamental problem to communication at the scale of hundreds of thousands of humans.

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I think that smaller, more insulated social communities are largely better for social engagement. It is easier and better to engage with people when you're in a smaller space where people are likely to better understand each other. The context collapse of "viral" tweets is a somewhat fundamental problem to communication at the scale of hundreds of thousands of humans.

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There *are* real benefits to federation as a tool; the ability to segment into meaningful subcommunities is good, and may provide value over time in allowing for people to achieve what they want without some of the downsides that a massive platform has!

But if so, that success will come not because "Mastodon is a Better Twitter!" But because (as others have said before me), Mastodon is a different thing that provides different options for social spaces.

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There *are* real benefits to federation as a tool; the ability to segment into meaningful subcommunities is good, and may provide value over time in allowing for people to achieve what they want without some of the downsides that a massive platform has!

But if so, that success will come not because "Mastodon is a Better Twitter!" But because (as others have said before me), Mastodon is a different thing that provides different options for social spaces.

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Prior to a month ago, Twitter probably provided one of the better experiences that a social media platform with 250M DAU could reasonably provide.

The things that made people upset were largely a result of operating at that scale. It involves making a bunch of crappy tradeoffs, because you're solving many competing people's problems.

The overall Mastodon network also has cracks that show at scale; federation is not a magic bullet for creating a kinder world.

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Prior to a month ago, Twitter probably provided one of the better experiences that a social media platform with 250M DAU could reasonably provide.

The things that made people upset were largely a result of operating at that scale. It involves making a bunch of crappy tradeoffs, because you're solving many competing people's problems.

The overall Mastodon network also has cracks that show at scale; federation is not a magic bullet for creating a kinder world.

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Seeing a lot of energy for "everyone is so nice here! I like this way more than Twitter!"

Friends, this has much less to do with the technical nature of the two services, or "capitalism", and much more to do with the fact that you have gone from being a member of a mainstream established platform to an early adopter of a niche platform.

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Seeing a lot of energy for "everyone is so nice here! I like this way more than Twitter!"

Friends, this has much less to do with the technical nature of the two services, or "capitalism", and much more to do with the fact that you have gone from being a member of a mainstream established platform to an early adopter of a niche platform.

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@danbri the fact that the protocol is open presumably leaves the option of creating an index outside of the main application possible--there's even flags for adding fill text search support to an instance today, via elasticsearch.

Folks who index for abuse purposes would presumably see negative responses, but those indexing for fact checking seem like they would be able to do so off-site?

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@danbri the fact that the protocol is open presumably leaves the option of creating an index outside of the main application possible--there's even flags for adding fill text search support to an instance today, via elasticsearch.

Folks who index for abuse purposes would presumably see negative responses, but those indexing for fact checking seem like they would be able to do so off-site?

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There is very real value to the world of prioritizing moving people over moving cars. It is frustrating to see so many people struggle to see this as a good thing, but I'm happy to be in a community where we have many people--electeds and activists alike--who see both the importance and the value of doing so.

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There is very real value to the world of prioritizing moving people over moving cars. It is frustrating to see so many people struggle to see this as a good thing, but I'm happy to be in a community where we have many people--electeds and activists alike--who see both the importance and the value of doing so.

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A sign held at ground level in a crowd, next to a large cargo bike. The sign reads "prioritize people over cars."

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A sign on the ground next to a tree. The sign reads "prioritize people over cars. Make ped safety higher priority."

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A group of 10 people standing shoulder to shoulder in a line in a park.

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@rawkitbawl yeah, I’m lucky enough that about 10% of the people I follow on Twitter are already at least trying to move here, heavily biased towards tech and local politics (which has a lot of overlap because of what local politics tends towards socially). This gives me a leg up on having some content in my feed.

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@rawkitbawl yeah, I’m lucky enough that about 10% of the people I follow on Twitter are already at least trying to move here, heavily biased towards tech and local politics (which has a lot of overlap because of what local politics tends towards socially). This gives me a leg up on having some content in my feed.

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@rawkitbawl as someone who has bounced off the platform twice before for having insufficient content to let me replace my Twitter doom scrolling adequately, I’m hopeful that the current surge of activity is maintained over time, so this can serve as a good alternative distraction.

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@rawkitbawl as someone who has bounced off the platform twice before for having insufficient content to let me replace my Twitter doom scrolling adequately, I’m hopeful that the current surge of activity is maintained over time, so this can serve as a good alternative distraction.

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@Cambikelanes happy to arrange a swap! (Or not even, tbh; I have Many Puzzles, and wouldn’t mind letting this one float to a new home where it could be enjoyed anew!)

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@Cambikelanes happy to arrange a swap! (Or not even, tbh; I have Many Puzzles, and wouldn’t mind letting this one float to a new home where it could be enjoyed anew!)

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@Gastlichu@mastodon.art sprite.

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@Gastlichu@mastodon.art sprite.

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This is, by far, the hardest puzzle I have ever completed. The trees, and flower bushes, were very similar; the clouds were weirdly ordered; the buildings and tree branches were often blurry and hard to differentiate.

I am glad I finished it.

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This is, by far, the hardest puzzle I have ever completed. The trees, and flower bushes, were very similar; the clouds were weirdly ordered; the buildings and tree branches were often blurry and hard to differentiate.

I am glad I finished it.

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This sign usually focuses on somewhat funny comments, from what I could tell.

But after the last 2 years of screaming over bike lanes, I definitely didn't find this particular take amusing.

(A hair salon on Mass Ave in Cambridge.)

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This sign usually focuses on somewhat funny comments, from what I could tell.

But after the last 2 years of screaming over bike lanes, I definitely didn't find this particular take amusing.

(A hair salon on Mass Ave in Cambridge.)

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A metal sign outside a shop on the sidewalk, which reads: "Quick!!! Get a haircut before there's no place to park!!!" in handwritten marker.

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@bikepedantic I was chatting with someone yesterday at the outreach event for this, and they said "I can't even really imagine what 720 people/hour looks like."

My approximate quick answer: It looks like 12 people at pretty much every light cycle (with 60 second light cycles).

It helped them realize that they experience this level of congestion almost every day.

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@bikepedantic I was chatting with someone yesterday at the outreach event for this, and they said "I can't even really imagine what 720 people/hour looks like."

My approximate quick answer: It looks like 12 people at pretty much every light cycle (with 60 second light cycles).

It helped them realize that they experience this level of congestion almost every day.