 Friends, strangers, haters: I have... made hay. Let no one say I haven't committed to the bit. (Wrote a paper about Asstodon, everyone be kind) https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/13367/11436 #STS #Mastodon #Commodon #autoethnography #DareIUseTheHashtag #Donkeygate #FirstMonday 73 comments
Might do a thread and tag people who were cited etc. later, but for now: thanks to everyone who accompanied me on this journey of jackassery Too bad it is only customary to include endorsements for books, not articles: "This has got way out of control, mainly because of your own need to self-promote and dramatize a very small initial disagreement and a couple of silly posts... Your dramatizing of it is understandable: we were all young academics wanting to change the world once, and we need to flag up causes!" (an excerpt of an email sent to my workplace by the asstodon antagonist, naturally)  @jdp23 Thank you! That means a whole damn lot coming from you!! And ofc your published posts and comments here helped me think through this, needless to say @inquiline there's a lot to think through, and I certainly enjoy thinking things through with you, so it's my pleasure! On the hashtag activism aspects, the way I look at it is that you have to vary your tactics based on the functionality and norms of the underlying platform(s). I remember Flowers talking about how you couldn't do BLM or MeToo on Mastodon, and lossy distribution was one of several although he didn't use the term ... @inquiline It's not like it's an impossible barrier to overcome, but the lossy distribution is a damping function for getting the word out and the different views of the discussion makes using the platform for organizing much more challenging. I'm sure it wasn't intentionally designed to dampen reach but it certainly has that effect. But, it is what it is. Relays can give a cluster of instances non-lossy distribution, but for the full AcivityPub-based network it's inevitably lossy @jdp23 Yeah, that's exactly right. Due to space and how in the weeds this is, I didn't really have the ability to further explore how users can have totally different views on convos here--could be its own paper or a few--but it's so impt. I'm not sure if that's the underlying reason for breakdowns, but it sure doesn't *help*  @inquiline does mastodon have any individual relevance beyond being the largest (and falling) platform on the fediverse? imho, the increasing MAU of misskey and lemmy is what is really relevant. Data from https://fedidb.org/ @mapto I don't know; does Mastodon have any relevance? 🤔 It brought over many tens of thousands of users during the moment/s when people were fleeing Twitter, and was written up in countless news stories then. It is also the subject of a paper I spent many hours experiencing, writing, and editing, to which you're responding, to tell me this topic isn't relevant. Do I have that right?   @inquiline  @mapto Jesus, dude. You’re really going with this, as your response to that article? Chapeau, I guess. @inquiline @adamgreenfield or argues for it being just like any other FLOSS space, therefore should be burned in a fire 😂 @adamgreenfield Ironically I'm sitting outside in frankly offensively bright sunshine and can barely see this  @adamgreenfield I do kind of love that by the time I go to look at the original offending post you're replying to that the poster has almost always been suspended already! Means I don't know what idiocy or hate they were peddling but that's kind of a perk. @mapto@qoto.org @inquiline @fifilamoura @adamgreenfield It seems a lot of us aren't networked to qoto?? What I can see over here is my instance admins have hidden either the user profile or the domain, but someone else brought this reply to me partly as a meta "can you see this thing" i.e. part of the work the paper is doing. I'm not sure if it would have appeared for me as a regular mention if I hadn't clicked through(?) @inquiline I get a 404 error if I click through so it's not just hidden, the poster or post no longer exist (for me at least). @adamgreenfield @fifilamoura @adamgreenfield Ah, maybe they deleted. Still visible here, but maybe bc cached. The mysteries and joys of federation! @inquiline I'm also on an instance with very proactive and responsive moderation. @adamgreenfield  @inquiline @fifilamoura @adamgreenfield Still there for me, so I believe y’all are defederated @kissane Yes, quite likely and one of the reasons I enjoy being on the instance I'm on. @inquiline @adamgreenfield @fifilamoura @adamgreenfield In this case I'm screenshotting in case it disappears, bc it's such a <chef's kiss> of the total Mastodon package lol  @inquiline really enjoyed this, in so many ways! Great to have an analysis of, and a term for; #LossyDistribution. And the case study works brilliantly. As does the auto ethnographic approach! It’s really important to discuss how #HashtagActivism is curtailed here; as well as how different hashtags in general fare here. Thinking also about the #ClimateDiary project. It frustrates me that - as I only realised about a year in - that I can’t see all posts. 1/2 @inquiline 2/2 this should really be changed at systemic level, but in the interim, might asking people to boost at least one post with a hashtag before using it themselves help? As far as I understand it, a connection and hence visibility is there once there has been a boost; or is it only following eaxh other? I have forgotten. #LossyDistribution  Pauline, I may not be understanding exactly what you're saying, but the crux on here is that you can follow hashtags. Just click on one and the follow button appears at the top. Equally, this reminds me of your mention of wanting to see posts in other languages. Likewise, just follow a hashtag in that language, e.g. 'climat'. Also, you can do as I did when I joined and either pin a post with hashtags, or put them in your bio. Hashtags are the thing.  Yes, you can follow hashtags, but that doesn't guarantee that you'll see everything on the hashtag. You'll see all the posts with that hashtag _which have reached your instance_. There's another kind of thing, I think it's called a group, where you include an @ for a special kind of account and it forwards everything sent to it. With those, because of the proactive forwarding, you _can_ see everything sent using the @. @unchartedworlds @pvonhellermannn @inquiline Ahh.. bugger. I give advice, but don't know what I'm talking about.🙂🙃Thanks for the clarification Jennifer. I'm on a busy server, so I guess that's why it seems to work as I thought. As I understand it, if you follow someone on a specific server, then that will mean that posts on it are included in your feed. Is that correct? https://a.gup.pe seems to be the main Groups place at the moment. Uhhh.. Pauline.. there's no ClimateDiary group! @gsymon @unchartedworlds @inquiline good point .. i guess i need to work out how to set that up. Everything on mastodon is so much work! I really noticed lack of reach and #LossyDistribution when I searched #Eurocentrism a few weeks ago. I only saw about 5 posts, half my own. It really can’t be the case that noone ever uses it. Depressing enough that noone in my network ever talks about it, as Mastodon so incredibly eurocentric. @gsymon @unchartedworlds @inquiline Btw I wasn’t looking for posts in other languages (i get quite a few), i just meant having connection to people from the Global South. That was for me the mostvaluable part of Twitter, that direct learning. These voices and connections are almost totally absent here. Here I struggle that so many people seem to be super comfortable in their little European bubble, never thinking about colonialism and the origins of all their comfort and privilege. @pvonhellermannn @unchartedworlds @inquiline Fediverse is indeed complex, but the advantages for those of us who abhor autocratic control, are worth the cost.. well for me they are. Wondering about accessing non-federated servers.. If you created a User on a server in a global south region, adding hashtags / following accounts, then followed this new account, from your current account, would it be an effective way of expanding connections? The new account would effectively just be a 'link'. @pvonhellermannn @unchartedworlds @inquiline Of course, if you just explore some of these servers and follow someone on them, then that should 'link' you to the server as well. @pvonhellermannn @unchartedworlds @inquiline You're probably sitting watching the thirsty, but wary giraffe 😊(truly beautiful and illustrates the incredible privilege of our modern world, to be able to see such things) I came across the giraffe whilst looking at fedi-servers in Africa. It was boosted by this account: @gsymon @unchartedworlds @inquiline @AfricaUnion 😄 I can’t see any giraffes, but have followed @AfricaUnion! @pvonhellermannn @unchartedworlds @inquiline @AfricaUnion Ahh... I 'boosted' it ... and it was AfricaUnion that had already boosted it. @pvonhellermannn @unchartedworlds @inquiline @AfricaUnion Get a cup of tea! It's a ~12min watch! 😊 @gsymon @inquiline yes, i know you can follow & search hashtags. But even when you do that, you do not see all posts with that hashtag in the fediverse, you only see posts by people you or others on your server are connected to (I think the connection can be a boost, but maybe it’s following). When i learned this I initially thought i would still see most #ClimateDiary posts as most of us connected, but i can’t be sure - if people i am not connected to use it I won’t see it.  @gsymon @pvonhellermannn @inquiline tip: make sure to click on any hashtags you put in your bio; and follow. @pvonhellermannn Thanks, Pauline. And yes I can see exactly why this resonates for you also. And it's so nonintuitive until you've been on here a while, and then it's disappointing. At the same time I do understand the virtues of federation/things being arrayed as they are. @Chanders 🤣 As I said a while ago, the charge of being on a noncommercial social network, populated mainly by Gen X and older nerds, on which I don't use my real name, *for publicity* is absolutely hysterical You get a special thanks for your role in all this, ofc (dubious praise, I know). I have a half-written second draft that if I finish it will implicate you to a greater degree @inquiline The whole thing makes me want to hide under a table, but your method reflections are 👨🍳😙👌, and extremely timely. @jcalpickard Thanks. (I'm salty bc I noticed there is a typo in that section introduced by editor, that I didn't see when reading proofs. Limn, not limit) Eh, I'm fairly tough, esp when it comes to mere indignities, which is all this really was. But it was also very nice to have people who had my back in the garbage @inquiline Thanks for the write up! I came across a donkey some time ago and now have the background to it. I wonder, if it would be possible to add semantics or origin to hashtags? In context it is usually clear that labor and labour mean the same thing. Could there be a rel=me attribute for a hashtag?  @inquiline Au Hasard #Asstodon ! Or if you want to see how the Fediverse unravels, follow the donkey. Great article, thank you. @michael Thank you! And I love this distillation: "if you want to see how the Fediverse unravels, follow the donkey" @richpuchalsky Lol, thanks! There's another half-drafted companion piece more about moderation, that quotes you. Not sure I will finish it, but maybe! I think that my numbers of citations in academic papers to blog comments is already above a couple, but I no longer keep track. In my latest poetry series I've turned to putting in my ORCID as my "ORC ID": I'll see whether that ever gets catalogued somehow. @kissane Thank you! And thanks ofc for your work/thinking that so informs my (silly) efforts over here... |
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