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Chris Trottier

What I haven’t seen reported by the Press even once is that, last month, the Fediverse reached 1 billion monthly messages sent.

Which is odd because that’s a more significant metric than sign-ups and MAUs.

For one thing, it indicates that people are more active on Mastodon than they were in November when MAUs hit their peak.

But Press ignore that!

25 comments
Kevin Leecaster

@atomicpoet
How does Mastodon's new account activity compare to any other social media platform?

Chris Trottier

@GreenFire Hard to know because while Mastodon’s data is largely transparent, other proprietary platforms are not.

Kevin Leecaster

@atomicpoet
So the media reports could state it like this, "As far as we can tell, Mastodon is the fastest growing social media platform", #JustSayin

Chris Trottier

Reading about that Press Gazette article, it seems they have an axe to grind against Mastodon.

Sure, Alphaville closed their Mastodon server. But why?

Because they allowed open sign-ups, which enabled anyone to join their server, and Alphaville didn’t have the resources to moderate it. Yet the Press Gazette don’t mention that.

Meanwhile, @TexasObserver runs their Mastodon server quite well, and even used it for crowdfunding—which has helped their publication survive!

DELETED

@atomicpoet @TexasObserver

And thrive even. But they want to exist in the preplanned and measured lanes. The cheese has moved and they aren't looking around for more.

Mike Fraser :Jets: :flag:

@atomicpoet @TexasObserver I've beat this drum a lot, but I believe if you're any sort of public facing organization you need to run a closed instance for your people and sponsor open instances in your vertical.

Chris Trottier

I often wonder why Press gets the reporting of Mastodon and the Fediverse so wrong.

And it’s because they’re not actually doing reporting. They just want to repeat the current narrative.

Wow! Mastodon is growing fast!

Wait! It’s dying!

Well, actually, it’s growing but its growth is slowing even though I’m offering no stats to back up that assertion! And I’ve cited another inaccurate media report to back me up!

This entire narrative arc occurred within the past 6 months.

Jeff (of the internet)

@atomicpoet

The growth is steady and slow and very awesome!

The majority of the "reporting" I've seen on Mastodon.... It seems that they're just making it up and calling it in.

Chris Trottier

@jeff Steady growth is better than a momentary spike.

Craig Nicol

@atomicpoet I suspect journalist Mastodon is a very different place from what I've seen, given how many admins actively block journalists and journalist instances.

Chris Trottier

People talk about ChatGPT being inaccurate, and that’s true.

But is it that more inaccurate than all those bad journalists who just make stuff up? Because believe me, I’ve seen so many articles where fact checkers are asleep at the wheel!

You know why ChatGPT is taking over? Because too many publications no longer give a damn about facts.

Travis F W

@atomicpoet No one gives a damn about content. And they haven't for a long time, because internet. And the search engines know that, which is why they're looking at LLMs to replace indexes.

Chris Trottier

If there’s one positive outcome that I hope comes from ChatGPT, it’s for journalists to separate bullshit from fact.

That’s the real value of journalism—ideally.

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@atomicpoet

Many 'journalists' are literally paid to produce BS that adds noise not signal.

The, few admittedly, I know are well aware. They mostly are deeply frustrated they can't get paid to do investigative or truth to power stuff. They need food, shoes for the kids, pay mortgage and bills.

Either we pay journalists to get social good journalism, or bad faith businesses will pay them to provide distracting 'free' BS.

Fediverse revolution dreams. User funded Fediverse News24...

@pineywoozle (s) for HARRIS

@atomicpoet Sadly, a large part of the media cares more about their bottom line than the truth and a ridiculous number of them even the ones that pretend to be liberal are owned by old white guys. Those old white guys, whether they support Republicans or the #farL don’t care about facts. They only care about manipulating their readers.

ch0ccyra1n :she_her::neocat_floof_cute:

@atomicpoet
Two words: Blog Spam.

It is the scourge of anyone who uses a search engine and is likely being accelerated due to chatgpt

Resting Facebitch

@atomicpoet Journalists really don't do their profession any favors.

It's self-inflicted at this point.

DELETED

@atomicpoet
ChatGPT is the definitive tool for automatic fake news and mass control. It's far more cheaper than paying a bunch of "handwritters" mercs. The AI and the sutile manipulation of digital historic archives and information is the beginning of the end.

Paul Förster :verified_blue:

@atomicpoet There is a bot that posts #Mastodon user counts on an hourly basis. So growth stats are backed.

mastodon.social/@mastodonuserc

segv11

@atomicpoet There's no big PR or marketing department to do a flashy press release. Tech reporters are used to getting their stories fed to them in press release sized bites. It's just too tough for them to get easy metrics out of the Fediverse.

They also don't like the lack of microtransaction options, so that adds some bias right there.

Adam

@atomicpoet
For real, how do you report that "news bosses" found Mastodon "empty and fragmented" without also reporting there are a BILLION posts per month from millions of active users 😕

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