With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!!
-
With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
@taylorlorenz hot take: smaller communities of intended audience is fundamentally betted than this town crier model of social media. In models like Discord (or the forums and IRC of old) because communities are smaller and separate from eachother, shared interests and values result in generally more intimate relationships where users still feel responsible for themselves as social community members. Large networks necessarily create massive hubs, individual users with many orders of magnitude more reach than the average user. The resulting emergent phemena are almost always negative for the user base and human behavior as a whole. Smaller networks like a discord server more closely resemble historical human communities and by being smaller, hubs (central popular people) are less common and held accountable by the small village of users they interact with, and are necessarily not orders of magnitude more popular than anyone else.
-
@futurebird@sauropods.win @Phosphenes@mastodon.social @aurochs@todon.eu Honestly, I love the "no ads" thing, but not everyone I know agrees. Sure, they complain about ads, but it's mostly where they interrupt what they are doing. Often, they don't mind, or even enjoy, well done ads that fit with the flow of what they are doing.
The ad industry thought that making people numb by forcing more ads at us from everywhere all the time was the solution, but in truth well made well placed ads turn out to be seamless, and people don't mind them.There's a place for ads on Mastodon, but only within a particular feed that is trying to do business. If you don't like it, unsub from that feed.
Fedi is like a public street with homes and businesses on the sides. We just don't want the road itself privatized.
-
@bovaz @aurochs @futurebird Entertainment is art. It might be folk art, it might be socially unacceptable to call it art (like cooking or gardening), but you want people to have an emotional reaction that sticks.
Conversation is communication; any emotional reactions that stick (which they plausibly shall) are a side effect of the information transfer attending on the common interest or interests being communicated about.
Where the control of what you see goes differs between those.
@graydon@canada.masto.host @aurochs@todon.eu @futurebird@sauropods.win Ok, that's what I meant when I said I could see it in the moment-to-moment interactions, but not in the platform technology design. An art-feed and a communication-feed could share the same technological basis/framework, and be "separated" by a click.
Of course, I could imagine doing something to inhibit/prevent one or the other somehow, or to mandate mixing them up like other social media do. -
@taylorlorenz I think one of the best ways is to recommend specific instances to people, that helps with being overwhelmed with options, etc. I've recommended this one I'm on (c.im) to several people and have had a couple join up that way.
@taylorlorenz also, TikTok is so LOUD. You open it and everything is screaming at you. And it's so not like that here, it's nice and quiet, just people talking to each other. It's not that whole 'influencer trying to get rich and famous' crap you see on all the other social media. If people want constant streams of screaming video, that's not here, it's still on the other socials.
-
@bovaz @aurochs @futurebird This is why the number of characters is significant (more purely conversational setups support many characters; short character totals are biased toward entertainment in a sort of pithyness contest that's encouraging a semi-poetic form).
How quotes are used and controlling who can reply (a highly desired feature) are Team Conversation.
I don't think this is a case where both is possible; the objectives are different.
@graydon@canada.masto.host @aurochs@todon.eu @futurebird@sauropods.win ok, I see what you mean. Thanks. -
Well, lot's of positive things that make the fedi is that it isn't mainstream ..
Always remember, the biggest celebrity has it's own mastodon server spreading asocial truths. And guess what, he not only doesn't federate, if he would, he'd be as blocked as gab by the rest of the community.
@bitpickup oh wow who are they?
-
@mattdm @futurebird @aurochs Wouldn't an easy way to setup bots that boost according to your algorithm largely do it?
-
With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
The way to answer this question would be, I think, to describe the pattern by which successful networks grow—not just digital social networks, but any kind. The fediverse is failing at one or more of the steps in the pattern (I propose).
At the minimum, a person joins a network only if they know it exists; it appears to offer valuable benefits; they meet the requirements of joining, be they cultural or skill-based (or both); and there are other people in the network with whom they want to engage, either actively or passively. Beyond this, they would also need available time to engage.
If any of those fail, they don’t join. Or they may drop off early.
-
@futurebird@sauropods.win @Phosphenes@mastodon.social @aurochs@todon.eu Honestly, I love the "no ads" thing, but not everyone I know agrees. Sure, they complain about ads, but it's mostly where they interrupt what they are doing. Often, they don't mind, or even enjoy, well done ads that fit with the flow of what they are doing.
The ad industry thought that making people numb by forcing more ads at us from everywhere all the time was the solution, but in truth well made well placed ads turn out to be seamless, and people don't mind them.@bovaz @aurochs @futurebird @Phosphenes "Often, they don't mind, or even enjoy, well done ads that fit with the flow of what they are doing."
LMAO no. Lies folks dependent on advertising tell themselves. Sigh.
-
The young people I know are mostly about phones, multimedia and each other. Less typing, more video, and easy sharing. So TikTok was a good fit.
But when it comes to data privacy and censorship, they are unconcerned lambs to the slaughter. Fedi's #1 selling point is lost on most of them (and US adults too, to be fair).
@Phosphenes @futurebird @bovaz @aurochs This is a "clueless olds look down on youngs" take. If anything it's the other way around. Being "about phones, multimedia, and each other" doesn't imply you're a fool about privacy and safety.
-
The fedi is slowly becoming a NORC (naturally occurring retirement community)
Only facebook has an older userbase.
And being more old than young that isn't a personal problem. But I wish there was more interest in making it a place younger people would care about. And that would mean listening to them.
@futurebird @Phosphenes @bovaz @aurochs
I think part of the NORC-ness of Fedi is that the Venn diagram of people who've been around long enough to grok the value of privacy, & of people older than N, is a circle.You can bring a GenX to the facts about privacy & freedom from the oligarchy's algorithms, but you can't make them give a $#!+.
Y'know, like horse... water... drink.
-
@Wyatt_H_Knott @bovaz @aurochs @futurebird @Phosphenes Um, no. Young people hate ads. Probably more than old ppl do.
-
With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
@taylorlorenz big names to follow. It's a shame that I keep seeing threads on Reddit about how social media is so corporate and nobody mentions the true anti-corporate platform.
-
With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
@taylorlorenz Some of the earlier issues and complaints have been addressed (like quoting). Discovery is still a big barrier, but being worked on. And one of the big issues is following a link to a mastodon post on the web and not being logged in because it’s not your server. I imagine only browser/extension support could solve that one.
-
I think "no ads" is a much more popular selling point than "privacy"
I mean ... even for me, it's the quality of the content and people (the fact that it's lively here) that matters most, after that? It's that there are "no ads"
The privacy is nice, but I don't think many people care about this much, or as much as we should.
@futurebird @Phosphenes @bovaz @aurochs No ads and no bloated JavaScript trackers in order to collect data for more ads (I'm thinking about Reddit which lately started to lag on my M1 MBA).
-
@futurebird@sauropods.win @Phosphenes@mastodon.social @aurochs@todon.eu Honestly, I love the "no ads" thing, but not everyone I know agrees. Sure, they complain about ads, but it's mostly where they interrupt what they are doing. Often, they don't mind, or even enjoy, well done ads that fit with the flow of what they are doing.
The ad industry thought that making people numb by forcing more ads at us from everywhere all the time was the solution, but in truth well made well placed ads turn out to be seamless, and people don't mind them.@bovaz @aurochs @futurebird @Phosphenes I mind them so much that I'd rather pay for a service. Just saying.
-
True no ads is great. But that leads to the question of, how do we get a high quality modern-feeling UI without an economy?
Ads are a f'ed up business model IMO. They create political pressure toward cowardice. And the 'marketplace of ideas' is totally corrupted by: marketing.
@Phosphenes @futurebird @bovaz @aurochs To me Mastodon's UI is snappy and looks modern.
-
@Wyatt_H_Knott @bovaz @aurochs @futurebird @Phosphenes Maybe you have examples in mind that disagree, but it sounds like shared culture, not success of advertising. Unless there's some formula that guarantees a toy go viral, attribution to advertising sounds like survivorship bias.
-
With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
@taylorlorenz
I fear that the changes required to attract the masses to Mastodon would ruin it for those of us already here. Let them enjoy their nazi bar. -
@Phosphenes @futurebird @bovaz @aurochs This is a "clueless olds look down on youngs" take. If anything it's the other way around. Being "about phones, multimedia, and each other" doesn't imply you're a fool about privacy and safety.
@dalias @futurebird @bovaz @aurochs
'This is a "clueless olds look down on youngs" take'
My data is accurate but my sample size is 2.
But seriously have you tried talking to people of any age about digital rights? 90% roll their eyes and go to sleep.
