Earlier quoted context omitted.
The context for those who wonder what "single-handedly" means: https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/99662106175542726
He was right!
So, was he wrong implementing it?
I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
461–470 of 497 posts
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#462Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not everyone has per-se bad experiences with social media. Not everyone who drinks alcohol is an alcoholic. Not everyone who gambles is a gambling addict. > Yes, it also tiggered some rage at some times, but that does normal social interaction as well. Anywhere can be toxic. The difference is that social media is incentivized to drive engagement, and the way most social media is set up leads to the kinds of anti-so…
Ha, your first example already shows how lost your cause is. America once tried prohibition, and pretty much gave up on the idea. These days, even though it might be harmful to many, alcohol is pretty much legal in many places on the world. Trying to make it illegal to protect the few that can not deal with it sounds--and actually is--hilarious. Same with social media. So calm down, the train has left the station.
Erm, I actually agree with you. Blanket prohibition wouldn't work, and in any case isn't really viable, due to the amount of money in the status quo.
I suppose I hope that future generations will consider social media in its current form to be a vice in the same way that alcohol or gambling are, but I don't claim to know what an actual society-wide solution would look like.
All I can do in the here and now is point out how fake social media is, try and articulate why, and gently guide people who might want off the ride towards spaces where they can connect with actual human beings.
In a way, I feel sorry for terminally online social media addicts. I never understood the appeal of sites like Tumblr, Twitter, or Instagram in the first place. Facebook seemed neat until the artifice of real people + real names + real pictures turned out to be smoke, then I stopped bothering with it. Reddit was probably the closest to being appealing that social media ever got, but it had some serious systemic issues with community-building that only got worse as moderators went from community curators to doing janitorial work for a large company >for free.
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#463I would love to love Mastodon, but discoverability was so incredibly difficult that I just gave up. I can find people and topics so much more easily on Bluesky. The starter packs are nice too. Does Mastodon have starter packs (lists of people to follow posting on a particular subject area, which ideally you could just click once and follow everyone)?
It's the opposite for me for one reason: hashtag follows!
There are very few people I want to follow for everything they have to say. I am interested in subjects, topics. Mastodon's hashtag follow feature gives me this. It's not perfect, you need to be on a relatively large instance to take full advantage of it (since it only picks up toots that make it to the instance) but it's still much, much better than no hashtag follow at all.
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#464Earlier quoted context omitted.
>(And for those curious/interested/familiar, yes it was "Bad Space" aligned people) What do you mean?
You'd have to be around Mastodon to know what that means, but basically there was an effort by some Black folks there to not just create their own server but to also flag and identify racist/toxic servers etc, and anyone who fit that as they saw was put on their thing called "The Bad Space." Was it well meaning? Yes. Did it end up being childish, overblown and power-trippy? Also yes. I find that most everyone on Mast…
> Did it end up being childish, overblown and power-trippy?
Very often what any group outside the mainstream does do to address their concerns is called 'overblown', etc. by people in the mainstream. 'They make too big a deal of it', you'll hear. The 'overblown' perception is a strong signal of the problem at work (and also condescending).
It goes to what is often the heart of the cause of the problems: The mainstream doesn't experience it directly, they only see it peripherally, and they can easily ignore it, which they mostly do. Doing anything effective about the problem therefore challenges the mainstream's norms.
If you are studying Ada programming, you talk to Ada programmers, not to people who read about Ada somewhere - the latter would be absurd; what do they know? If you want to know about the experiences of Black people, conservative Christians, etc., you need to talk to those people and listen to them. It's not overblown to them.
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#465Earlier quoted context omitted.
FWIW I was trying to disagree with the person I responded to and agree with you. Sorry if it came off some other way. Actually, thinking of it “we don’t have much insight into what it really means” could look be read as sounding negative toward your post; not intentional! I though they were applying an overly-restrictive definition of “agree with 97%,” and was trying to point out that what you actually wrote “97% sim…
Yes, that's what I was trying to do with "y'alls," trying to respond to the whole thread -- I understood that you, bee_rider, got what I was saying.
[dead]
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#466Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Influencers don't bother because it doesn't have the massive following and reach other platforms have Mastodon doesn't have an "algorithm" (in the online recommendation sense). Every post is sorted by post date, which biases against virality. Influencers don't go on mastodon because they can't "go viral". They can't spew dramaslop or whatever other psychological trickery to gain a greater reach. Mastodon isn't buil…
Influencers get paid by social media platforms. What if private users sought to fund influencers to actively post on mastodon? Towards having more content and activity on instances. Many influencers have patreon and are keen to attract more funding. Many could maintain mastodon in addition to other platforms.
It would be hard to make it work.
Influencer's approach to posting tends to be the "shotgun" / "throw shit at a wall and see what sticks" approach.
Since Mastodon only sorts by date and not by popularity/virality, anyone who follows those influencers are going to get spammed by every single one of their posts.
Mastodon users have a simple solution for dealing with spam, they unfollow that person.
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#467Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'd have to be around Mastodon to know what that means, but basically there was an effort by some Black folks there to not just create their own server but to also flag and identify racist/toxic servers etc, and anyone who fit that as they saw was put on their thing called "The Bad Space." Was it well meaning? Yes. Did it end up being childish, overblown and power-trippy? Also yes. I find that most everyone on Mast…
> Did it end up being childish, overblown and power-trippy? Very often what any group outside the mainstream does do to address their concerns is called 'overblown', etc. by people in the mainstream. 'They make too big a deal of it', you'll hear. The 'overblown' perception is a strong signal of the problem at work (and also condescending). It goes to what is often the heart of the cause of the problems: The mainstrea…
A good principle in theory, but did you miss that I mentioned that I am black as well?
And on one hand I understand that for very many issues, black folks get unfairly percieved as making too big of a deal of things etc.
But no, I'll stand firm here. The Bad Space people are genuinely a bunch of weirdos. So much so that I feel compelled to call them out as such because I understand that for a lot of Mastodon, they're a point of contact for "Blackness" for a lot of people who are not black. And frankly, I find them embarrassing in a way that I literally never have ANY other black folks in real life. I do not want non-black people to believe that their behavior is normal or appropriate.
As in, I never found "oh, they're just playing the race card" to EVER be valid.
Until I went to Mastodon.
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#468Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Did it end up being childish, overblown and power-trippy? Very often what any group outside the mainstream does do to address their concerns is called 'overblown', etc. by people in the mainstream. 'They make too big a deal of it', you'll hear. The 'overblown' perception is a strong signal of the problem at work (and also condescending). It goes to what is often the heart of the cause of the problems: The mainstrea…
A good principle in theory, but did you miss that I mentioned that I am black as well? And on one hand I understand that for very many issues, black folks get unfairly percieved as making too big of a deal of things etc. But no, I'll stand firm here. The Bad Space people are genuinely a bunch of weirdos. So much so that I feel compelled to call them out as such because I understand that for a lot of Mastodon, they're…
> A good principle in theory
And especially in practice.
> I am black as well
I don't know that it gives too much legitimacy to the argument. There are ~~ 40 million black people in the US; lots of different ideas and perspectives. If I went by all the black people who try to shock me by saying they like Trump, he would have gotten 70% of the black vote. Frankly, lots of people online claim to be black after they say something critical - and especially something racist (you didn't say anything racist, afaik) - as if that somehow justifies it. It's a well-worn troll tactic to turn the tables on racism, etc.
> And frankly, I find them embarrassing in a way that I literally never have ANY other black folks in real life. I do not want non-black people to believe that their behavior is normal or appropriate.
Doesn't that take on the too common perspective toward black people (and lots of other groups), that each black person is like a spokesperson of a universal Black Persons Association and speaks for / represents every other black person?
Freedom is the freedom to be outrageous, wrong, disagreeable, etc. (Not that disagreeing with you or me is 'wrong'.) Look at what white people do.
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#469Earlier quoted context omitted.
A good principle in theory, but did you miss that I mentioned that I am black as well? And on one hand I understand that for very many issues, black folks get unfairly percieved as making too big of a deal of things etc. But no, I'll stand firm here. The Bad Space people are genuinely a bunch of weirdos. So much so that I feel compelled to call them out as such because I understand that for a lot of Mastodon, they're…
> A good principle in theory And especially in practice. > I am black as well I don't know that it gives too much legitimacy to the argument. There are ~~ 40 million black people in the US; lots of different ideas and perspectives. If I went by all the black people who try to shock me by saying they like Trump, he would have gotten 70% of the black vote. Frankly, lots of people online claim to be black after they say…
It's not an "argument?" And if anything it's just more of a confirmation of your exact idea of being against a universal Black Person's Association.
Which is to say, to some extent, innocently, people on all sides often DO have in their heads some-kind-of uBPA, and I just wanted to make sure that people knew that in the pure opinion (again, opinion) jrm4 very much thinks the Bad Space is very far from any putative uBPA.
Re: I am stepping down as the CEO of Mastodon
#470[flagged]
This is not an acceptable comment on HN, no matter what nationality you're talking about. Drive-by snark is exactly the kind of thing we're trying to avoid here. Please take a moment to read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45972558 and marked it off topic.