Promotion of alternative social platforms policy • Hacker News Board

Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy

#631

Post by jrmg » Sun, Dec 18, 2022, 8:22 PM UTC

synu wrote: post #551

jrmg wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m never sure what people mean when they say things like this. I found community in Twitter by following people I knew, a small number of organizations, websites and celebrities, then occasionally following people I learned about through retweets or replies. How did you do it on Twitter? Did you use the search functionality? What did you do with it? The idea of doing that just seems overwhelming to me. I mean all th…

I wasn’t able to find anyone I know, and the incoming discovery feeds were people I didn’t know anything about talking about stuff I wasn’t interested in. Overall it was just really quiet and felt empty. Maybe this means I joined the wrong server, not sure. Eventually it seems someone deleted the server I was on, I am not sure if I can do anything about that or not. When I first joined Twitter it seemed like more peo…

It sounds like another server would’ve served you better - but I get what you’re saying, it’s not only that, it’s the nature of Mastodon (or, ActivityPub, I guess). Servers basically only know about their own users, and people they follow.

I joined Twitter in the fairly early days, and my network grew from tech folks I’d met in real life out (‘Are you on Twitter? What’s your handle?’ was a common refrain at meetups and conferences). Later, non-tech friends, news organizations and celebrities joined. It was easy to organically grow my feed without search or algorithmic recommendations, and I never came to really use either.

If you were to try Mastodon again, my recommendation would be to initially join either a large server (mastodon.social, mas.to etc.) or one that targets an interest you have (tech?). On the targeted one, the local feed might be interesting. On the larger one, the federated feed will be pretty complete and searchable for hashtags.

Wherever you join, as you follow people it’ll become more rounded out and you’ll start to see boosts from people you follow that might reveal others to follow - from all sorts of servers. It’ll feel more like early Twitter before the algorithmic feed.

I have to admit, server choice paralyzed me for a long time! I finally joined a local geographic one - sfba.social - and it’s pretty good. Being the SF Bay Area the local feed can have a good mix of local and tech stuff (and a lot of random uninteresting ephemera, I will admit…) and it’s big enough that the federated feed is pretty full too (perhaps too full!). But server choice doesn’t _really_ matter - it’s easy to move and I haven’t seen any criticism of folks moving.

Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy

#632

Post by exq » Sun, Dec 18, 2022, 8:22 PM UTC

aebabis wrote: post #107

dmje wrote: post #60

Surely this is all some kind of Christmas comedy pantomime where there will be some huge reveal at some point. It's so far beyond anything even vaguely sane, it's tragic.

I remember saying the same thing about Trump's campaign.

Narcissist birds of a feather...

Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy

#633

Post by rayiner » Sun, Dec 18, 2022, 8:22 PM UTC

ancapsfascists wrote: post #398

modeless wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carmack was clearly cross-posting, not promoting Facebook. Twitter doesn't generally allow long form posts like that, so it clearly falls under the cross-posting part of the policy. I don't like this policy either, but let's not make up reasons for it to be bad. There are plenty of real reasons.

The policy says comments like, "follow me @ on Instagram" are explicitly forbidden. One could very easily argue linking to ones own Facebook post could fall afoul.

There is a whole section on how cross posting is permitted: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/social-platfo...

> What is not a violation of this policy?

> We recognize that certain social media platforms provide alternative experiences to Twitter, and allow users to post content to Twitter from these platforms. In general, any type of cross-posting to our platform is not in violation of this policy, even from the prohibited sites listed above.

> Additionally, we allow paid advertisement/promotion for any of the prohibited social media platforms.

To be clear, I think it's a stupid policy. But it seems like they added this section to expressly address the very concern you are raising.

Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy

#634

Post by lynndotpy » Sun, Dec 18, 2022, 8:24 PM UTC

fencepost wrote: post #425

est31 wrote: post #108

When MS bought github many people moved to gitlab and started to advertise their gitlab IDs. I too put my gitlab in there. But ultimately, gitlab didn't catch on on a permanent basis: most devs still are on github, thanks to network effects. People removed their gitlab mentions. I feel the same with the "find me on mastodon" twitter bios: people will realize that only 50 of their thousands of followers can be found o…

people will realize that only 50 of their thousands of followers can be found on mastodon, and then move back in a few weeks This may vary by community. A big chunk of the Infosec community has migrated and seems quite happy about it. Other communities may do the same, particularly if they feel that Twitter isn't likely to be a safe place for them given Musk's increasingly Qbert attitudes.

This is my experience. Mastodon has absolutely replaced Twitter for many of my use cases, because many of the communities I follow have left Twitter.

Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy

#635

Post by photochemsyn » Sun, Dec 18, 2022, 8:24 PM UTC

jrmg wrote: post #284

photochemsyn wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blocking direct competition is one thing, but what if Twitter starts blocking tweets about VW electric vehicles and promoting tweets about Tesla? It's a very strange setup - although not that different from Bezos' and the Washington Post removing all investigative journalism into the CIA / NSA while AWS seeks large services contracts from those government entities.

Washington Post removing all investigative journalism into the CIA / NSA while AWS seeks large services contracts from those government entities That happened?

The last major work of investigative journalism of that nature at the post was "Top Secret America" with lead reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin (2010):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Secret_America

Feel free to point to anything even vaguely similar since Bezos took over the post.

Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy

#636

Post by rsynnott » Sun, Dec 18, 2022, 8:26 PM UTC

holler wrote: post #574

jrmg wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don’t just move to another centralized platform. Mastodon is right there, and working.

> Please don’t just move to another centralized platform. Do you believe that all centralized platforms are inherently evil?

Well, they’re particularly vulnerable to the current twitter failure mode.

Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy

#637

Post by hakanderyal » Sun, Dec 18, 2022, 8:26 PM UTC

guelo wrote: post #630

hakanderyal wrote: post #557

PG just announced he is moving to Mastodon[0][1]. This policy can be rolled back, but the trust is eroding, and it's much harder to rebuild. People will be more and more afraid of spending time&effort to cultivate an audience on Twitter. For me, it'll require a leadership/ownership change, which is not that likely? PG can do it, his audience will follow. Not everyone has that luxury. Especially for those who are at t…

I actually think leadership/ownership change is pretty likely. With the network shrinking instead of growing it's less likely by the day that Twitter is going to be able to make payments on the ridiculous debt Elon saddled it with. At some points the banks will takeover to salvage what they can.

I haven't thought about that angle, it makes sense. But I'm not sure it'll happen in the near future.

Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy

#638

Post by modeless » Sun, Dec 18, 2022, 8:28 PM UTC

Klinky wrote: post #544

modeless wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue that but one would be wrong because cross-posting is clearly allowed if you read the whole policy instead of just the first section.

One could argue a clear definition of "cross posting" should be provided before assuming it'd be allowed. A policy like this is going to have a chilling effect regardless, due to the ambiguity. It's also a quite absurd for a free-speech platform to even have such a policy in the first place, even if it's attempting to reign in "direct promotion" rather than sharing content across platforms. > At both the Tweet level…

I agree with you that the policy should be clearer and I agree there's a chilling effect and I agree that it's absurd. However I disagree that the policy is so unclear that Twitter would be at all likely to interpret it as applying to the specific case of Carmack's post, as OP is arguing. Using fallacious arguments like that weakens your position rather than strengthening it. We can do better.

Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy

#639

Post by sshine » Sun, Dec 18, 2022, 8:28 PM UTC

wfaler wrote: post #413

sshine wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would any consumer want an "everything app"? 1. Everyone else has it 2. You can pay with it anywhere (pay in shops, pay people, pay online) The Apple and Android app stores are everything apps.

"Everyone else has it (China)" doesn't make me want one.

It’s called the network effect.

Twitter, Facebook and WeChat are mainly valuable because others have it.

You may be immune to the network effect, but then again, you’re commenting on Hacker News. :-)

Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy

#640

Post by surteen » Sun, Dec 18, 2022, 8:30 PM UTC

est31 wrote: post #108

When MS bought github many people moved to gitlab and started to advertise their gitlab IDs. I too put my gitlab in there. But ultimately, gitlab didn't catch on on a permanent basis: most devs still are on github, thanks to network effects. People removed their gitlab mentions. I feel the same with the "find me on mastodon" twitter bios: people will realize that only 50 of their thousands of followers can be found o…

This Twitter drama is strikingly similar to Freenode. A rich guy bought it, people started moving to Libera.chat in small numbers and advertising their new channel on Freenode in the topic. There wasn't a huge exodus, though.

Then this new owner started taking over channels and kicking everyone out that had mention of a Libera.chat channel in its topic, forcing everyone to move all at once.

I haven't heard of anyone still on Freenode since then.