4 ms·

We literally had exactly this model on all social media platforms for years and while I certainly remember everyone had that uncle who posted everything he saw

We literally had exactly this model on all social media platforms for years and while I certainly remember everyone had that uncle who posted everything he saw on Fox News and exchanges that made for awkward Thanksgiving dinners it wasn’t nearly as toxic as it’s gotten now, especially wrt strangers and bots.

saagarjha 3y ago
This is how Mastodon works right now. I assure you, there’s plenty of this kind of content there.
- throw__away7391 3y ago
  Well I certainly don’t have empirical data or anything other than my own experience of close to 20 years interacting with people online prior, the biggest thing that has changed as far as I can tell is the drive to engagement and introduction of algorithms to further that goal. Of course there’s always has been and always will be toxic content but to me it feels like society is breaking down in a way that is unlike what was happening before and it seems largely driven by social media interactions.
- unmole 3y ago
  This. People keep saying how the Fediverse is awesome and different. But everytime I go to sign up for Mastodon, I'm greeted with culture war rage bait and I decide against joining.
  - seszett 3y ago
    But it's not the case for me, how comes? Surely you must willingly follow people who post this kind of content, or inflammatory tags? Because I think it's the only way this content can reach you.
    - unmole 3y ago
      > Surely you must willingly follow people who post this kind of content, or inflammatory tags? Because I think it's the only way this content can reach you. Really? Right now, if I go to mastodon.social, I'm redirected to https://mastodon.social/explore https://mastodon.social/explore and 3 out of the first 4 posts are people fulminating about "red states", "anti-racism" and "Twitter" respectively.
      - d110af5ccf 3y ago
        Similarly, if you visit certain instances you will be greeted with the polar opposite of that. The inhabitants of some instances are more political than others. If you actually create an account you will be able to pick and choose whose posts you want to see. The strictly chronological approach seems to work fairly well as long as you only follow a few people but it doesn't scale very well.
        unmole 3y ago
        > The inhabitants of some instances are more political than others. Which ones are less political? I went to a supposedly global and tech focused instance only to find US political slogans in the "About" page itself. > If you actually create an account you will be able to pick and choose whose posts you want to see. That didn't work on Twitter and I doubt it'll work on Mastodon. Neither of them have a way of categorising posts into topics. There's no way to follow someone to get updates about their work without being subjected to whatever political digressions they chose to share.
        seszett 3y ago
        > There's no way to follow someone to get updates about their work without being subjected to whatever political digressions they chose to share. Well that's a weakness inherent to microblogging, some people like it evidently (as seen by the success of Twitter). I don't and only got a Mastodon account because I need it to follow some work I'm interested in, and indeed I need to ignore posts I don't care about. Following and ignoring tags helps, but it's not perfect. But it works better than on Twitter.

saagarjha 3y ago

This is how Mastodon works right now. I assure you, there’s plenty of this kind of content there.

throw__away7391 3y ago
Well I certainly don’t have empirical data or anything other than my own experience of close to 20 years interacting with people online prior, the biggest thing that has changed as far as I can tell is the drive to engagement and introduction of algorithms to further that goal. Of course there’s always has been and always will be toxic content but to me it feels like society is breaking down in a way that is unlike what was happening before and it seems largely driven by social media interactions.
unmole 3y ago
This. People keep saying how the Fediverse is awesome and different. But everytime I go to sign up for Mastodon, I'm greeted with culture war rage bait and I decide against joining.
- seszett 3y ago
  But it's not the case for me, how comes? Surely you must willingly follow people who post this kind of content, or inflammatory tags? Because I think it's the only way this content can reach you.
  - unmole 3y ago
    > Surely you must willingly follow people who post this kind of content, or inflammatory tags? Because I think it's the only way this content can reach you. Really? Right now, if I go to mastodon.social, I'm redirected to https://mastodon.social/explore https://mastodon.social/explore and 3 out of the first 4 posts are people fulminating about "red states", "anti-racism" and "Twitter" respectively.
    - d110af5ccf 3y ago
      Similarly, if you visit certain instances you will be greeted with the polar opposite of that. The inhabitants of some instances are more political than others. If you actually create an account you will be able to pick and choose whose posts you want to see. The strictly chronological approach seems to work fairly well as long as you only follow a few people but it doesn't scale very well.
      - unmole 3y ago
        > The inhabitants of some instances are more political than others. Which ones are less political? I went to a supposedly global and tech focused instance only to find US political slogans in the "About" page itself. > If you actually create an account you will be able to pick and choose whose posts you want to see. That didn't work on Twitter and I doubt it'll work on Mastodon. Neither of them have a way of categorising posts into topics. There's no way to follow someone to get updates about their work without being subjected to whatever political digressions they chose to share.
        seszett 3y ago
        > There's no way to follow someone to get updates about their work without being subjected to whatever political digressions they chose to share. Well that's a weakness inherent to microblogging, some people like it evidently (as seen by the success of Twitter). I don't and only got a Mastodon account because I need it to follow some work I'm interested in, and indeed I need to ignore posts I don't care about. Following and ignoring tags helps, but it's not perfect. But it works better than on Twitter.