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Mastodon hit 10M users

mastodon.social

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Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#361

Post by muyuu »

Spivak wrote: post #258
brabel wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Toxic and hateful people simply get banned I don't know if that's supposed to sound like a good thing, but to me this sounds like a distopian place where anyone that does not align with the "correct worldview" is made to disappear and never be heard of again. If you think "only bad people are toxic", you probably haven't been to many debates where your viewpoint happens to be the minority viewpoint.

I don’t know why HN seems to have a culture of confusing minority opinions for toxicity and hate. If you are against gay marriage there’s nothing at all toxic or hateful about that. Hell, I know gay people who were against gay marriage when the public debate was at its peak. Where it’s toxic is if any time a gay person talks about wedding planning, posts a meme about the phrase “her wife” having good energy, or share…

> Like y’all, it isn’t that hard to expressly minority opinions without being toxic or hateful. I express minority opinions constantly and have never once even been worried about the banhammer.

I've been banned from several subreddits for simply disagreeing with majority views, and pretty much every time it was in a neutral or respectful tone.

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PS: the entire concept of "toxic" seems "new age-y" and pseudo-religious. People refer to things being toxic as a substitute for "evil" and "taboo" - stuff that brings uncomfortable or negative associations, and in this manner they are embedding their projection of a civil religion onto others, which is an act of aggression in itself in a medium that is supposed not to have such rules.

Note that they say "toxic" and not just "rude" which would imply a certain common, traditional culture that most people would be expected to know and to some extent abide by. Toxic takes the place of the figure of "rudeness", "bad manners" and "heresy" but instead of based off a longstanding tradition, culture and religion, based of a newfangled atheist civil religion that a lot of people simply don't accept or don't want to play ball with. Their very presence and their discourse is seen as contaminating society, thus "toxic" - this is exactly equivalent to the moral worldview of a religious fanatic.

And those "heretics" are dealt with with medieval intolerance as there is no discussion to be had on these "values" from their point of view. You see in this people the fervour, hatred and emotional response you'd expect from an inquisitor who just witnessed wanton heresy or a taboo being broken, and that is exactly how more often than not mods behave in these platforms. Their interest in expanding their ideology and protecting themselves and others from heretics motivates them to put a lot of free labour in these endeavours, which is hard to compete with.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#362

Post by rsynnott »

davnicwil wrote: post #7

Anyone know how a decentralised system like mastadon can meaningfully assess user count? In terms of accounts corresponding to real, distinct people? And has such an analysis been done to produce the numbers this account is reporting?

I assume it's not a particularly exact science; in particular it would definitely miss completely defederated instances like Gab and Truth Social, but also likely a lot of small federated ones.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#363

Post by rsynnott »

the_third_wave wrote: post #39
unpopularopp wrote: post #14

Are the undesirable instances included in this? Edit: seems like they aren’t. So probably there are more users and the 10m have been passed long ago

> the undesirable instances Which would that be? Undesirable by whom? Who gets to decide whether an instance is "undesirable"? I'd think that what is undesirable to one is the bee's knees to the other. Who is to be the arbiter of desirability? In a truly distributed system the answer would be 'nobody - everybody'. Are you talking about instances which are blocked in the source code of Mastodon? Blocked in some of the…

So there are two categories:

Widely blocked instances: these are part of these stats.

Instances which intentionally completely defederate (Gab and Truth Social, mostly): these are not.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#364

Post by TeMPOraL »

enaaem wrote: post #305
brabel wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Toxic and hateful people simply get banned I don't know if that's supposed to sound like a good thing, but to me this sounds like a distopian place where anyone that does not align with the "correct worldview" is made to disappear and never be heard of again. If you think "only bad people are toxic", you probably haven't been to many debates where your viewpoint happens to be the minority viewpoint.

That was pretty much the world before mass social media. Most forums were human moderated and you can be banned for just being a jerk. Moderators are most of the time pretty good at interpreting nuance, tone and intention.

Except, before social media, forums were focused and independent, and the Internet itself was a nerdy hobby. Getting banned from a discussion board might have hurt in some cases, but wasn't really that big of a deal.

Today, social media are all-encompassing, and Internet is now a critical part of normal life. Getting banned from one modern discussion board can easily get you banned from every other one too, and/or the fallout may impact "offline" aspects of your life. At best, it'll make a bunch if things inconvenient. At worst, it may destroy your relationships, your career, and push you into poverty.

Or, in other words: getting banned from a group in the 1990s or early 2000s was like getting a formal reprimand in your record at school. Today, it's starting to look more like getting a criminal record in the police database.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#365

Post by phplovesong »

dym_sh wrote: post #136
phplovesong wrote: post #92

I applied for mastodon, but never got an confirmation. I think the tech has some serious bugs, and afaict needs polish. When users cant sign up theres red flags going on.

> I applied for mastodon which server? there are multiple server-side platforms too, incl. some forks, so if mastodon.social is not for you – look around for better lighter alternatives (as well for self-hosting) start around here: https://github.com/emilebosch/awesome-fediverse#applications

Literally one of the first ones i found in mastodon.org. Clicked "tech" servers, then browsed until i found fosstodon.org, which seemed like the best match for my own preferences. So signed up, and still nothing. This was months ago, so i have pretty much given up on the entire thing.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#366

Post by jrm4 »

rchaud wrote: post #339
jrm4 wrote: post #274

For what it's worth, my Mastodon experience. Broadly, I think the best use of Mastodon IS to be a Twitter competitor; a noisy town square. What I have seen is -- the disagreeable people on Twitter want to publically fight. They want to push their bad ideas and have everyone listen to them, and thus are willing to get into it. The disagreeable people on Mastodon want to silence others. They're more block happy and don…

Mastodon is not a commercial entity, it doesn't have to compete with Twitter any more than my alumni.university email has to compete with Gmail. Mastodon offers a simple solution to stay out of the text wars, one that Twitter wouldn't dare offer: "turn off reblogs". Half the people I follow retweet/boost things I find irrelevant (personally). I can turn that off on Mastodon to reduce the noise. I can't on Twitter bec…

The problem is, it's not a very good "solution" because reblogs was also a useful feature in spreading certain kinds of information.

In my opinion, Twitter was (and is) instrumental in effectively highlighting certain kinds of important, unrecognized, "news," e.g. police brutality.

I'm glad Mastodon folk are considering effective ways to reintroduce it.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#367

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

brabel wrote: post #355
SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m really confused by this rhetoric, because the logical conclusion is that Bob should at minimum be exposed to things he doesn’t want to be exposed to regardless of what the thing is because of the potential Bob might be missing out on a good point. But it also means if Alice’s view is sending Bob death threats and threatening to murder his family, Bob should be exposed to that as equally as if Alice’s view was tha…

It's very disappointing that you cannot distinguish between "opposing views" and "death threats". Let me try to help: one is not illegal so it should in principle be allowed on a platform that is seeking an honest discussion. The other is a crime and can be dealt withing the framework of the law. If the person commiting crimes is behind an anonymous identity, I think that's where the problem actually lies - perhaps t…

I think you’re trying to make exceptions because the actual rhetoric and logic this leads to is distasteful. Using “well it’s illegal” is just shallow logic to differentiate speech that should or shouldn’t force people to expose to as is that people should be exposed to whatever they consent to be exposed to.

Frankly, if Alice is seeking honest disagreement discussion, Alice should seek to talk with people who consent to that kind of engagement with her, instead of chasing after Bob who would rather not engage. If Alice is having difficulty finding those people, maybe her source selection is simply quite uncommon; lots of highly controversial subject matter applies almost exclusively to small parts of the population, and a minority of that minority is generally available to debate on that subject.

I’m sure Alice can have spirited debate about toppings on pizza, a subject that a larger set of people are usually willing to disagree and discuss about. If she insists on trying to force a minority of a minority to debate with her, I think a friend group is fairly justified in defending Bob by ousting Alice, as Alice is unable to respect people’s basic boundaries like “can we change the subject”.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#368

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

Spivak wrote: post #352
jmatthews wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know I will 100% regret posting anything remotely viewed as political here but this... Both sides actually want free speech, the blue side just argues that speech is more free when it's not stifled by hate. Is the most alarming doublethink I have seen in some time.

I can't speak for other people but I'm not gonna go after you or anything. It's not unreasonable or anything to see freedom as in liberty as contradictory in nature, people say the same thing about the paradox of tolerance or tragedy of the commons. It's one of those things things if you say viewing freedom from a systems perspective is invalid then its the natural conclusion. I don't really see it as doublethink. Th…

You, an individual who does not want to see this can set ignore on that someone.

It is consistent if you accept the logic leap made to assume restriction on speech somehow enhances it. Personally, I am not convinced, because I think you confuse safety ( or mental comfort ) with freedom.

Maybe the word freedom has become too overloaded with meaning in English language. Maybe we should use something else:

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear"

Also, as a very practical measure, even if we do assume that hate speech actually does what it is supposed to do ( identify hate and remove hateful content ), do you really think it is smart to hide it from public view? And we did not even touch that 'hate speech' has recently come, not unlike nazis' to mean 'anything I don't like'.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#369

Post by dmatech »

krapp wrote: post #338
konart wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I see you self-identify as a "honkler", which is an explicitly neo-nazi As a Russian who is lost in modern english langauge: does this "honkler" thing has anything to do with https://humungus.tedunangst.com/r/honk ? Also a golang fediverse project.

No: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Clown_World

Neither RW nor Wikipedia are reliable sources for what is alt-right, neo-Nazi, or any other contentious term. The terms themselves are largely a matter of opinion, and the sources used to make these determinations don't even pretend to be objective.

Re: Mastodon hit 10M users

#370

Post by eecc »

the_gipsy wrote: post #357
eecc wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well if there's no way to spin anything without getting entagled in some sort of intersectional original sin, then it's devolved in Jacobin Terreur.

You have made your decision, then.

Can you elaborate? I’m suspecting you mean “If You're Not Part of the Solution, You're Part of the Problem” which is unfortunately the level of narrow minded zealotry that’s so damaging
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