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I think I’m not alone that Mastodon is giving me the ick

andy-bell.co.uk

31–40 of 66 posts

Re: I think I’m not alone that Mastodon is giving me the ick

#31
post #30
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "Nazi" epithet just shows a lack of imagination and historical knowledge by those who use it, basically Godwin's Law exemplified. After all, on the American side, the Confederacy predated Nazi Germany by 70 years or so, and with regard to Musk, he comes from South Africa with its own history of Apartheid, so there are much more relevant antecedents, if you want to go there. It feels like "Nazi" has become…

> It feels like "Nazi" has become a just an empty, generic stand-in for "really bad". Well... yes. Language evolves and terms generalize over time as the context in which they're used gains distance from their original meaning. No one is accusing Elon Musk of being a member of the German National Socialist Workers' Party.

> Language evolves and terms generalize over time as the context in which they're used gains distance from their original meaning.

Yes, but I'm old enough to remember being told that we should "never forget" the Holocaust. Perhaps people are already forgetting though. I think it's a mistake, indeed a moral error, to trivialize this word.

> No one is accusing Elon Musk of being a member of the German National Socialist Workers' Party.

The problem is that hyperbole never helps one's case, only makes it worse.

Re: I think I’m not alone that Mastodon is giving me the ick

#32
post #5

As far as I can tell, the only people who moved to Mastodon are the people who are REALLY tuned into Twitter rage, aka the super insufferable ones. Most people seem to be just fine continuing the normal shitposting and whatever on Twitter.

[flagged]

No, I don't care that Elon Musk is the owner of Twitter.

Re: I think I’m not alone that Mastodon is giving me the ick

#33

Mastadon depends a lot on what instance you're on. You're community is primarily your instance and non-instance users are secondary (discovery is bad outside the instance). Unlike Twitter you have to be intentional about your community. I've been on Mastadon since before Musk said anything about buying Twitter. I never viewed it as a Twitter replacement, but I never spent much time on Twitter to begin with. I think a…

So which instance is a good one? Cause you have to pick a few at the end of the day. I'll legit give it a try.

Last time I played with anything remotely similar to a federated social network, it was Jabber/XMPP.

Re: I think I’m not alone that Mastodon is giving me the ick

#34
post #27
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people on Mastodon really do love to poke fun at Twitter though. I can imagine that real Twitter fans might not enjoy that much.

Sure, I've definitely seen that. But that wasn't one of the author's complaints. Instead there was the rather strange complaint: > People relentlessly calling Twitter the “birdsite” Twitter users have been calling Twitter the birdsite since forever, so I don't get the criticism of Mastodon. Maybe now though we'll start calling it the dogsite.

Also, who even cares if it's called the "birdsite?" The author is upset about that one word?

Re: I think I’m not alone that Mastodon is giving me the ick

#35
I quite enjoy the people on Mastodon. Some of them are very irritating in the way that very online people are always irritating, but on the whole they're decent enough. (At least, the ones I see are. Mastodon is very varied.)

But I find the platform itself exceedingly irritating. The UI is horrible.

Re: I think I’m not alone that Mastodon is giving me the ick

#37

I quite enjoy the people on Mastodon. Some of them are very irritating in the way that very online people are always irritating, but on the whole they're decent enough. (At least, the ones I see are. Mastodon is very varied.) But I find the platform itself exceedingly irritating. The UI is horrible.

Elk is pretty good. My vmst.io provider offers either the Mastodon software or the Elk software as optional "frontend"s to the Fediverse.

Re: I think I’m not alone that Mastodon is giving me the ick

#38
post #28
post #3

The bit about tone policing is under appreciated IMHO. If you are very careful to never offend anyone then you will never be influential. Influence is about changing people's mind and people may be offended when you challenge their preconceived notions. Now obviously you need moderation on large discussion platforms. The disproportionate effect of trolls can't be ignored, but it is possible and even easy at times to…

I disagree. It's entirely possible to have discussions of value between people of differing beliefs without offense, certainly without purposely seeking to offend. That and the "influence" culture it creates is a large part of what people fled to Mastodon to avoid. You don't have a right to come into someone else's space and insist on telling them they're wrong about their beliefs or identity or whatever you take iss…

What is the point of the internet if not to tell people they are wrong?

But more seriously, you don't have to have the intention to offend to run afoul of overly restrictive policies. Even worse this can create an atmosphere of fear that stifles discussion. Self censorship is the most insidious form of censorship.

Re: I think I’m not alone that Mastodon is giving me the ick

#39
post #6

I think this is inevitable when your community is basically a splinter group from some incumbent which ends up being an identity-level trait of that splinter group. It contributes to a culture of NOT being like the incumbent instead of a culture of existing alongside the incumbent. Another example would be Reddit clones like Voat and, sometimes, even HN. When I was a pre-teen, I was banned from NeoGAF, the massive ga…

On the other hand 4Chan was basically formed when Somethingawful kicked a bunch of weebs off of their forums. They somehow managed to find their own identity.

Yeah, there are exceptions where the splinter outgrows the incumbent.

I know nothing about 4chan much less its early days, but maybe 4chan didn't have the "at least we're not Something Awful" culture, or maybe it was unique enough to attract enough new blood that had no clue what Something Awful was.

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