seeing another round of "don't favorite posts on fedi"

[awawawa@mastodon.social]

@sarae when i say something here and it's a funny/emotional/interesting thing to me, then a friend presses that button, it makes me go "hehehe! they saw that :D"

[blag@typo.social]

@sarae Fringe benefit of starring posts that I discovered is that they then show up when you search using the 'in:library' qualifier.

This is a nice way of not trying to bookmark everything that you might want to find again at a later date.

I am still trying to boost or comment rather than favourite where I can, as I do think these forms of engagement are really important here.

[sarae@ecoevo.social]

@awawawa yeah I often use it as a way to let people know I saw their reply in a conversation

or as a "hey, right on"

[sarae@ecoevo.social]

@blag oh I'm a big fan of boosting, obvs

but I also kind of have an idea about "these are the topics I'm sharing news about" and when things are way outside that, it's good to have another tool in the box

I use boosting more like I use sharing articles the the family group texts

[gpjohnston@mastodon.social]

@sarae I’ve not seen the nega-fav posts, what they got against favoriting?

[lalah@sakurajima.moe]

@sarae oh no, not this nonsense again... I remember last time they were saying, "never fav or boost, only leave comments!" as if there aren't enough reply guys already!

actual discussion is good of course, but commenting for the sake of commenting... why?

[moss@kind.social]

@sarae @awawawa yes! I sometimes read as +support +love +you’re seen

in disability communities I feel especially it never vibes “they LIKE that I’m having a brutal week,” it’s “they saw I’m having a brutal week & sent me a boop to know I’m not alone”

I think it’s v weird when I see discourse and ppl are adamant it only means “I like this”. Have your friends not been suffering & do you not boop support?

[david_preston@mastodon.social]

@sarae I generally have very low interaction stats on here though in general for digital socialising media but the little interactions I do have are quite warming to my cockles and perhaps help me to bring the hits to the niche masses. #mastodon #socialmedia #silentsunday

[leguinian_utopia@union.place]

@Recalcitrant I think that can be turned off, or at least I remember untoggling something lime that

[recalcitrant@autonomous.zone]

@leguinian_utopia hmmmmmm I’ll look into it

[gpjohnston@mastodon.social]

@moss @sarae @awawawa Agree. If someone posts that they’re having a hard time, often I might not fully understand why or how and worry about commenting delicately. So I favorite the post to be supportive, to acknowledge their discomfort .

[shnooflebear@curly.cat]

@sarae Sounds like the old "gaming the algorithm" mind set. Luckily, on Mastodon, things that are worth spreading, are spread, whether you fav it, or not.

[colo_lee@mstdn.social]

@sarae total agreement.

maximizing-reach culture is toxic. It's a very good thing to leave behind here in the fediverse.

Being kind and recognizing each other is good. And it's the kind of lovely action we should be encouraging...

[sarae@ecoevo.social]

@lalah that really confused me as well

commenting doesn't increase post visibility in this system, and yeah...unless I have something to say I should keep my mouth shut

hell a lot of the time when I have something to say I should DEFINITELY keep my mouth shut, lol

[schratze@todon.nl]

@sarae literally who says this

I've never seen anyone make this recommendation

[sarae@ecoevo.social]

@GPJohnston it doesn't feed an algo so that's a problem, I guess? idk it's a mindset that doesn't fit well with how I use the system

[mycrowgirl@flipping.rocks]

@moss yeah, I definitely use it as a boop of friendly acknowledgement too. @sarae @awawawa

[sarae@ecoevo.social]

@GPJohnston @moss @awawawa yep exactly this

"hang in there buddy times are tough but I am on Team You and hoping for the best"

[kimapr@ublog.kimapr.net]

@sarae@ecoevo.social

it's true that it doesn't particulary increase the distribution of your post but the idea that we're all here to get things distributed as far as possible is pretty weird

the funny thing about this: on the Pleroma/Misskey side of the network, favorites distribute posts across servers the same way boosts or replies do, they just don't push the posts directly to followers' Home Timelines --- so they do increase distribution, but in a less obvious way (it's more obvious on smaller servers like mine where any interaction could facilitate federation that would otherwise would not happen).

it doesn't really work that exact way on Mastodon though from what i've seen, as Mastodon doesn't seem to federate favorites at all except to the post author.

[colo_lee@mstdn.social]

@sarae @GPJohnston It's also policing behavior, telling other people how they should be behaving. I don't like it. Not one bit ...