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Hello everyone! I write my bachelor's thesis about Mastodon as an alternative social network and how its users perceive the platform. I would be gratful if you would participate in my survey: It only takes 10-15 minutes and would help me a lot. In case you want to support me, you can repost the access link, which would also help me. Thank you! 110 comments
 @palllyyy cheers, sent out. in the the general question section, unless it's not at all pertinent to your research, noting a difference between a regular user, a moderator or an admin of an instance might probably add additional nuance to some answers. like: i'm an admin of my instance. but i do not, in general, trust admins with the amount of power they have, myself included. @palllyyy Just HONESTLY completed your survey. A couple of things: You should have had a "How many times a day do you post?" question. Not the "Do you post once a day?" The Censorship question is subjective. It all depends on a person's idea of freedom. Is stopping right-wing views censorship? I would argue that it is. I would argue that suppressing any conversation on a topic is censorship. For me only illegal content should be censored. I wrote "Restricted" on my pad but forget what now.🤦♂️  @dick_turpin @palllyyy But isn't it about the general perception? In that case, I think it works. For some, it helps with censorship, while others will feel they were censored. @palllyyy It might sound nitpicky but is this questionnaire about Mastodon the service or Fediverse the network, yes, I understand it's in the survey's name but what's the intent? I can't answer some of those questions because I'm on the Fediverse and use Mastodon services second-hand (by reading what their users wrote) but "I like that Mastodon is a not-for-profit" does fit my case. I'd rather not add shit data to the pile. @palllyyy I’ve done my best to answer. Your questions about why people migrated from twitter didn’t get to the heart of why I left - I left because Twitter changed and became a right wing fascist echo chamber. It abandoned its normal content control. I refused to be part of it anymore. I like Mastodon but it can’t replace for me what Twitter used to be in my life. @shakespearenut @palllyyy This is exactly what I was going to say, I did not feel the options covered that reason for leaving, which I know is a common one. I was having a blast on Twitter for many years, but it turned into something else. So it was ideological reasons rather than concern about the financing or technical aspects or even privacy. Really quick survey about attitudes to Mastodon - take the survey and/or pass it on! Why do you repeatedly say that Mastodon is "alternative" ? It's just social media, like all other social media. Sure, it's an alternative to other social media, but TikTok is an alternative to Facebook, which is an alternative to Reddit, etc., etc. The wording makes it seem like all other social media is normal and standard, but Mastodon is somehow strange and different. That seems circular to me: you say Mastodon is "alternative" media. If the usage was, say I could understand, but I read the usage as being just like the phrase "alternative medicine", which has connotations of being weird, and not based on proven scientific facts.    @palllyyy Hi Paula! I've just answered your survey, but you didn't raise two questions that are the most important for me and those are the reasons I migrated to Mastodon. First, it's Mastodon's better accessibility for every category of users including blind screen reader users like me, and second (strongly tied to the first one) is that Mastodon, unlike the darned network that X became, has a robust API and allows you to create a third-party client for any platform, be it Web, Windows, Mac or mobile.  @palllyyy Hi Paula, I think you might still be able to amend your survey from the feedback here but only by adding additional questions. That way you don’t confuse your original data if you do not get enough people filling in the changed questions. Maybe check with your thesis supervisor since it sounds like some of these suggestions would be useful in your analysis. Having a 'date of last use' would be good among the reason. Maybe ask the community here for their reasons so you can list them, along with an 'other' field, makes the data easier to quantify than having to code text responses. @palllyyy That's super cool! I once wrote an essay about the fediverse as an alternative social network! If you allow, I'd later love to read your thesis. 🙂 @marionline Thanks a lot! I am not sure whether I can publish my whole thesis but maybe I gonna share some of my main insights. @palllyyy done! #my2cents Still bit of a pity to include X *and* other BigTech vs Mastodon alone/only. Mastodon is part of the "Fediverse". One of the interesting thing with this ecosystem is also the fact that you can interact with more than just one tool/platform. Think Pixelfed, Plemora, GoToSocial, BookWyrm, Peertube etc etc. That said, good luck for your memoir!   @palllyyy  Migration from X: "Migration in this context means that you used X/Twitter until a point in time and then immediately shifted to using Mastodon." I had a trial phase where I kept my Twitter account for a while, before later deleting it. So while I would normally answer "yes", I did migrate from Twitter to Mastodon, because of the "immediately", I'll have to answer "no". Not sure why you stress the "immediately", I find that a bit weird.  Yes. That question was less useful than it could have been. Another questionaire "don't": Do not ask negative questions. There was at least one in this one. One big plus for me on Mastodon is that (not all, but) most of the people I encounter here are more friendly than most of the people I've encountered on Twitter. Fediverse feels more like a friendly encounter among humans, Twitter like a constant battlefield. I find it peculiar to answer a fact question (have I donated?) on an agreement scale. It doesn't quite fit. Straight "yes/no" would be better. @palllyyy a small thing but some questions regarding supporting your instance/admin do not provide very clear answers. at some point you ask something like “i do not think about how admin instances are…” which is very confusing & could be rephrased in the positive. also i don't see how you can agree/disagree to a statement like “i financially support my instance” which should be a simple yes/no question. anyway, good luck with your thesis! @palllyyy Just wanted to say, maybe others have done this too, the last batch of questions is very dependent on the instance you're on and the moderators, re your questions on misinformation, marginalised groups, and so. Because the Fediverse is also notorious for "I don's see any racism here" and more general reply guys.   @Heidentweet @palllyyy Certainly. At first I was a bit mystified by people complaining about harassment and racism because I never see anything even *approaching* that. I've come to realise that my instance just has really good moderation so I'm in a bit of a bubble (the best sort of bubble, it must be said) and never see what others are seeing in the first place. @palllyyy small typo in the final message: “Any repost of the access link on Mastodon would help me grately” ➡️ “greatly” @palllyyy It felt like you assumed everyone have used one of the "monopoly platforms". I only use Mastodon/fediverse and see it as the only social media. There is no other. This is not "an alternative" as much as the only alternative. So I left "no answer" for some of the questions. There is a lot of us "extreamists" around here. :blobcattea: Also, what is a "superior person"? The instance owner? Good luck with the bachelor. @palllyyy Thanks for the answer. So because of the decentralized nature we choose our "superior person" whether it's the regulations of the country the instance is in or the views and track record of the admin(s). I feel quite fine with that as I can become my own admin if I like. Once again. Good luck. #MediaStudies #AlternativeMedia #Mastodon #Survey P.S. The very last paragraph says "if you want to **conact** me" instead of "conTact". @palllyyy I really didn't understand what the "superior person" question (last page) was asking, it's a weird and uncomfortable phrase. I am guessing it's just a translation/different cultural dialect thing though. I didn't "migrate" from twitter, I had both accounts for years, but did drop twitter completely when the fascists fully took over. I appreciate there are many possibilities here, though. Most of all, I appreciate you offering a "no answer" option in addition to "neutral"!  @palllyyy Just in case you also take open form comments: I definitely do miss some things from Twitter: mainly that everyone seemed to be there, including companies and local government, with a very low bar to get in contact, and twitter used to be where I found even local news before the media picked up on it. Also, some of my interests are not discussed here at all. That said, I have found other interests here that I hadn't on Twitter, and my experience has been very positive. @palllyyy Completed and boosted. Reach out if you'd like more readers/advisors, I'm in Germany as well and not currently teaching but have advised on master's theses in the past and the topic is pretty relevant to a lot of my own research interests. @palllyyy I missed a few items. I stil have an account at X, be use it seldomly. Unfortunaly a lot of importantant (local) persons remained on X. Never had bad experiences on X, due to filtering/blocking certain words. Do that also on Mastodon.  @palllyyy server seems to hang at the moment, can you ping us when it should be reachable again @palllyyy sorry to be that person, I completed it but for some of the questions I wasn't sure whether you were using "Mastodon" to mean the Fediverse or Mastodon GmbH. I completed it as though you were referring to the Fediverse because that made more sense to me from the context, but you might find it helpful to clarify? After being through with the questionaire, I think it was a bit underwhelming? The questions are superficial talking points from a Twitter/Centralized vs. Mastodon controversy. I personally do not perceive Mastodon vis-a-vis the background of a Twitter experience, though. What was not addressed: Do I feel at home here? Do I make friends (sort of)? Do I have negative experiences? Which topics do I think end up in negative/positive expierences? And so on. ... It felt as if my perception of Mastodon was not actually a topic. Rather what I would answer to Twitter Fanboy or an Investor or Boss when I want to push Mastodon. In reality I am not talking to either of them.  @palllyyy Contributed! How did you become interested in the topic? (apologies if the question was asked already) @MartinVuilleme Thank you for participating! I did some reading to find a suitable topic for my thesis. I knew I wanted to stay somewhere in the field of digital capitalism and social media. I read a text about the struggles of Twitter and how to 'improve' it and then had the idea to do something centred around Mastodon. I never used Mastodon before, but I heared about it, and it was very interesting to get to know a social network that differs so much from the 'standard' platforms. @palllyyy the study is a good idea. Survey just submitted. Good luck! Maybe you also want to share the results here later if you have the go by your supervisors.  @palllyyy Somebody else already said that it's sometimes hard to distinguish if you mean the Mastodon codebase, the nonprofit or the fediverse, but you also have some points that are actually mostly about the particular instance(s) someone is on – for example when talking about moderation. Maybe some of those should've been split into two points each, one about the general state on the fediverse and one about people's chosen instances. @palllyyy regarding moderation and scalability there have been some good points from the perspective of having a large audience in this threat: https://mas.to/@TechConnectify/112255213427125689 @palllyyy Before taking the survey, I have to tick the box confirming I have read the privacy policy, but i can see no privacy policy (I am using Firefox) @marinheiro The data policy should be embedded between my welcome text and the box to confirm. @palllyyy Thanks - my confusion was because the box said privacy policy and I assumed this was something different from the data policy. Bad assumption - now to do the survey! @palllyyy One question is about 'home instance'. I have more than one, as I suspect others do, and that is important to me.  @palllyyy I filled out the survey - in the last set of questions I didn't know what was meant by "a superior person" so I left that blank. Good luck with your thesis!   @palllyyy Also have this one in my open tabs, they also make a survey as it seems (there is link): https://www.rug.nl/library/open-access/blog/one-year-after-x-embracing-open-science-on-mastodon @palllyyy done. Though free text boxes for further explanation might have been useful, with all the rather schematic answers. Good luck. And to a powerful free and open democratic non-populist media network @palllyyy And to be honest lots of the questions in the last part don't sound very neutral (and the negations additionally skew them). As a reviewer I would claim invalid bias on this. |
Gregory's Server
@palllyyy
Completed and boosted!
In some cases, it is hard to tell if you mean "Mastodon the software", "Mastodon the project", "the fediverse", or "my specific Mastodon instance", but I've done my best!
Good luck with your thesis :)