this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2024
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I've been on Mastodon for over a year and the content simply isn't there. Several of the people that I follow on Twitter have tried moving or duplicating to Mastodon. They've had a fraction of the visibility and engagement from commenters that they would get on Twitter. Invariably after a few months they have essentially given up on it as a primary medium. For me the discoverability is essentially non-existent, which I don't think is helped by the idea of it being based around instance-local communities, which have no meaning when you're looking at something like Twitter.
Maybe they should stop caring about visibility and engagement and concentrate on participating in, building and y'know enjoying a community?
You can not have one without the other. Influencers look for audiences. If the community has no influencer, it means that the audience is irrelevant or inexistent.
I genuinely don't care about influencers. Like, at all.
It's okay, they don't care about you either...
Strangely comforting for something I'm sure you thought was a snappy comeback,
Not a comeback. My point is that no one cares about this space at all. We had for the past two years everything in our favor to dismantle corporate-controlled social media, but the people that are here have ridiculously small ambitions and seem to keep the Fediverse completely irrelevant.
How else can I put it? Imagine that you live in corner of the woods of Bumfuck Alabama and you say, "I'm so glad we don't have McDonalds around here", like it was some reason to be proud. It's not, it just means that you live in a place so desolate that not even McDonalds thinks it's worth it to open a shop there.
You're using words like 'ambition' and 'irrelevant' like the Fediverse is some sort of corporate entity. It's not - that's a point very much in its favour in the opinion of quite a lot of people on it. Contrary to your opinion that no one cares, lots do. What some of us don't care about is catering to a set of people who are paid to express opinions and who, it seems to me, over a period of time end up becoming Andrew Tate or Russel Brand.
There's no McDonalds in the town I currently live in, which is 20 minutes away from one of the largest cities in the country. It might come as a massive shock to you but I - and I think the majority of people - can survive just fine without a Mickey D's. Not having one doesn't make a place desolate, it makes it healthier. And if someone really wants a Big Mac, they can go and get one from elsewhere.
Do you see what I'm saying? This isn't the same place as that - it's quite nice to have a place online that still isn't. And for those that do want that, they can still spend time there if they chose to.
That's faulty logic. The presence or absence of a fast-food chain does not indicate that people eat better or worse than a place without. If you live in the US (and maybe the UK) I can bet a $100 with you right now that the average person in your town is heavier and more prone to metabolic diseases than the average person where I live (Berlin, Germany). Even if I am surrounded by probably a dozen Döner shops from my building, I am not forced to eat there. On the other hand, on average we eat less processed food, the restaurants are not serving those ridiculous oversized meals, the European lifestyle requires more physical activity, etc.
Likewise to the social networks. You are just saying "I don't want Andrew Tate". A big network is not just made up of assholes. The presence of some assholes does not imply that the average user is an asshole, and it also does not mean that you need to deal with them. But a small social network does unfortunately implies that there will be less of the good people.
Instead of saying who you don't want, have you actually tried reaching out to the people that you do want to see here? Can you honestly say that you can find a diverse range of people that talk or work with things that are of your interests? Because I surely can not, and I am not one to have an extremely long list of interests and hobbies...
No, that's absolutely the problem. I don't want to go to Reddit, because of Reddit management. My problem with Reddit is not the "average redditor", or "power-tripping moderators of popular subs" because I never went to Reddit to talk with the "average redditor" and I don't care about "popular subs".
Personally, even the API changes wouldn't affect me. I used old.reddit to browse on desktop and I was never a big user on mobile. But the reason that I decided to leave was because Reddit decided to complete turn against its users to pursue relentless growth.
By "going to Reddit when I want", I am still enabling Reddit and I am complacent with the status quo. I can only solve "my" problem by having people out of Reddit and into an open alternative that is more resistant to enshittification.
Mate, I was simply extending an analogy you introduced. I neither know (nor care) what the presence of a McDonalds does or doesn't do so don't Sagan me. Nor am I claiming mainstream social media is all arseholes. What I'm saying is that mainstream social media most certainly has the ability and propensity to make people into arseholes due to constant enshittification - part of which is the influencer phenomenon in my opinion and the need for growth at all costs.
I most definitely have reached out to lots of good people on the fediverse and had lots of great exchanges that follow both professional and 'hobby' based interests I have.
But here's the thing - you want growth? OK. I also have no issue with growth. But the best sort of growth in my experience comes organically. It happens at its own pace. The minute you start prodding it along with managed algorithms and all the other stuff mainstream social media now has you end up with an extended hate room. I don't miss Reddit or Xitter at all. I genuinely mean that. No more 'suggestions' of people to follow, no more manufactured outrage getting pushed to my feed, no more clickbait. Instead what I have now is a curated feed across multiple different types of experiences that I spent some time getting how I want them and dipping in and out of when I want to.
Who here is talking that the way to grow the network is by applying the techniques from Big Tech? It seems like you've created this giant strawman in your head.
All I am asking is for us to be more welcoming to people here, even if they are not exactly like what you wish. Or to help your friends to try it and see if they can help enough people/content for them to remain invested. Or even (possibly?) reaching out to someone on Twitter/YouTube and say "hey, I want to keep following you, but I don't want to stay here. Would you consider creating an account on Mastodon/Peertube?", etc.
I'm tired of people arguing that the sum of the people in the platform does not equal its culture. Facebook and other social networks clearly benefit from having influencers in their platform, and they make the platform orbit around it.
People who use facebook are not responsible for old people posting what they want. But also, Facebook earns profit from that kind of behavior, so it makes its algorithms circle around it.
It's like saying Instagram isn't responsible for all the influencers and the 'vibe' it has. It is responsible for it and you don't make the platform your own, especially not with the Big players.
Even Mastodon, where you can set up your own instance, has its culture, even if it is richer (culturally) than Instagram or Facebook.
No, each person does not make the platform their own or make out of it what they will. Only a masochist would stay on Facebook preaching their own culture while they have other options that fit better.
Your argument fails.
Also, on another note, I'm tired of Carl Sagan's atheists using Darwinism as basis for lack of a God, and I'm not a christian or muslim. That's just reason to silence people who don't want to take "scientific" argument at face value. True science is debatable and built upon healthy discussion. Not something you toss at other people to make them seem dumb or preach like a religion.
There is a crucial difference. The cool thing of the Fediverse is that there is no central authority. There is no CEO pushing things in one direction or another to try to maximize revenue. We have here the potential for real diversity of groups and interests, but (so far) all we seem to be getting is a very tiny vocal minority that wants to complain about anything that resembles the mainstream but is unable to build an alternative.
You are reading too much into the quote. I just pointed out that faulty logic. Nassim Taleb also talks a lot about this
This was genuinely funny. Thanks.
To each its own, I like it here.
What would you suppose it is ambition, to feed off influencers? What good would that bring to the platform?
If the people who used it would benefit at least. But then again, that's cryptocurrency culture, so I don't know if both complete each other.
I think we could and should work to make the Fediverse an universal alternative. If not make it something that appeals equally to everyone, but to have a real diverse set of people and users. My litmus test is simple: my wife is still on Facebook because of different groups: parenting groups, events around town, some arts and crafts showcases... If I ask my wife her to take a look at Lemmy, will she find something that interests her?
So far, the answer is no. The range of interests around here is very small: sophomoric discussion of US politics, outrage-bait pieces whenever Musk/Zuckerberg/Bezos does something stupid, a handful of otakus, a somewhat-larger-but-still-small group of Linux nerds... that's about it. Everything else is represented by at most one or two people who had a sizeable community on reddit, but failed to bring them over.