Technology Connections' thoughts on Mastodon

Not at all surprised.

I follow Alec on Mastodon and the vast majority of interactions over the past few months have been people aggressively "well ackshually"ing him or outright getting angry.

That isn't to say it is all shit (I would like to think a few conversations I had with him were mutually pleasant). But his entire ethos is that he approaches problems from a practical "midwesterner" perspective. And that REALLY angers all the ideological nutjobs who are angry if anyone even suggests something that won't advance their own pseudo-political goals.

And I've noticed it with a lot of other "celebrities" on Mastodon. The rest of us can have fun conversations while the shitheads stay to themselves. They are too high profile and the shitheads flock to them to make sure they understand why they are actually wrong and are a bad person for thinking something.

When you compare Alec's recent videos with his early ones, it's pretty clear that the negativity he receives has been wearing him down. Like many YouTubers, even when he's sharing information about something he loves, he's very bitter and sarcastic about it. Like, half of each video is trying to pre-argue with his trolls.

I understand why popular content creators have to set boundaries because it seems like a pretty soul-destroying job to have. If Bluesky helps him do that, more power to him. But for a nobody like me, I prefer Mastodon, largely because I've made friends with people on my local instance, and interacting with other servers is merely a bonus feature.

Okay, that's his opinion. Like his opinions on many things, I feel entirely free to disagree with him.

I'm sorry he hasn't liked it, but critique is how we get better. Hope Mastodon keeps growing.

Honestly I feel the fediverse is like the 90s internet. It's like school clubs centered around different interests and it takes a little bit of work to find your peer group but once you do it's great. People that look to it as a replacement for Twitter are looking for a town square to shout at people and hock their wares. Anyone that makes money from engagement ether directly or indirectly are not looking for camaraderie but a market.

Mastodon simply is a different thing than X/Bluesky. It's more like RSS/Blog/IRC. It will never go mainstream unless they add (opt out) algorithms and a better search functionality. But maybe that's just not worth it. Mastodon has already lost to Bluesky when it comes to being an open mainstream Twitter replacement.

I'm curious about if it's even technically possible to build something federated that feels like a Twitter replacement, using the ActivityPub protocol.

I unfollowed Alec on Fedi because every other post would be him complaining about his interactions on there. Reply guys. Trolls. Lack of algorithms which raise some of the better comments out of the drek. Insufficient moderation. Etc. This got boring and depressing to read about honestly.

However I think he's totally right. Mastodon/Fedi works well for certain kinds of people. People with limited engagement, people posting mostly uncontroversial things, and perhaps people who just don't give a shit. But for high-visibility folks like Alec the old-school unfiltered discourse seems really uncomfortable.

It has little to do with federation itself, I think. But if Mastodon ever added the choice for users to enable "modern social media algorithms" for their view of their feed I suspect it would work a lot better for many people.

I feel like we need to unite and make Mastodon a better place instead of making drama about it. Mastodon is not perfect, but it's a platform over which we have control, unlike Bluesky.

Mastodon is more for people who like to have interactions or conversations back and forth with other people, while the big platforms are for influencers/broadcasters and consumers/viewers-- any back and forth interactions there are more between commenters than with the influencer/broadcaster. Of course there is some overlap and exceptions to that characterization, but that's how it generally seems to me.

So IMO it's not a competition, there's plenty of room for both types of SM. Depending on a person's preference they may use just Masto, just big SM, or use both, each for different reasons. The problem is when people expect Mastodon to be just like xitter/bsky/threads and get upset that it isn't. Relax and use whichever platform(s) you like.

I had to unfollow him because discussion on my feed ended up so overwhelmingly negative I just didn't want that in my life :/

The amount of negativity on that thread alone is enough for me to realise that bluesky is not for me. I enjoy the positivity I find on the fedi and decided I wouldn't use a platform that algorithmically rewards negativity when I was harassed off facebook. I am glad that others are finding it nicer than twitter but for me it seems much the same but without Elon Musk

With so many opportunities presented to it, Mastodon still hasn’t found its footing with the mainstream audience.

I think its users should accept the platform will remain a niche for the foreseeable future.

So, unfortunately when I go to Mastodon these days it's a bit of a ghost town. And I say unfortunately with sincerity - there are some things I really liked about the ethos behind it. However, the reason I'm posting this here is that I couldn't put it there without getting instant shit. 🧵…