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Top-level
 The general (and relentlessly repeated) advice here, that I am the one who needs to take control over my experience here to have a good time, is honestly really really irritating. I'm gonna lay this out on the line right now: if I have to put this kind of work in to exist here peacefully, it's more likely that I'll just bow out and stop trying altogether. My needs and experience here are likely VERY different from yours. At this point, they're often too different to reconcile. 79 comments | Expand all CWs
 @TechConnectify It really does suck to hear that you're having this sort of problem with your experience. To take control over our experience here we really need some tools. I.e. most of us here don't miss black-box algorithms designed to keep our eyeballs peeled, but we _would_ enjoy the ability to plug in user-defined filters and algorithms. Some system like, idunno, ublock where you can subscribe to filters, would be good. See also what happened with reddit around mod tools. Shouldn't open protocols and source be enabling control tools already?  @syklemil @TechConnectify That's one thing Bluesky is doing right. People look at all the Feeds and assume they're provided by Bluesky (and thus Bad Like Twitter), but most are developed independently. They need to expand that thinking to the existing filters which are way too narrow. A near-duplicate reply filter would, if I understand correctly, solve a huge chunk of the problem for people with large followings. (for example)  @syklemil Well, there is nothing preventing them to exist (for instance level administration they actually do), except of someone putting in the work to build them. There are APIs for all of this, there i the ability to fork the projects and there is a lot of documentation. But yet someone has to sit down and build it for it to exist. (maybe it actually already does exist it's just not known enough.) See: https://codeberg.org/oliphant/blocklists/src/branch/main And one last point: If, as the culture appears here to be, it is up to the individual user to curate their experience: Just fuckin' unfollow me! Mute me! Curate YOUR feed! You can make your life better without making mine worse. @TechConnectify but then I can't ragepost and feel entitled about me being miserable!!! /s @TechConnectify Its the problem with this federated network, there is no structure to filter out the low quality stuff. If you decide that Mastodon isn't for you maybe try BlueSky?  @AlgorithmWolf @TechConnectify Bluesky seems to be trying to make federation not an issue for its users, while here federation is a core part of the fediverse’s identity, for obvious reasons of course, but things can get messy when you have your gripes with it as Alec has seen. And that’s not counting the different sides of fedi he might’ve ran into that’d make it a bloody mess. @Flaky @AlgorithmWolf Yeah, that time the Lemmy post kept creeping into my notifications and my replies to it kept appearing on Lemmy sure. was. fun. @TechConnectify I’m sorry that you’re feeling this. I genuinely enjoy your contributions here, and the reminders that you have a new video. I don’t have any solutions, and as you say, my experience is unlikely to match yours in any way that I could offer constructive advice. But if it helps at all, I, very selfishly I acknowledge, hope you stick around and continue posting. @TechConnectify you're absolutely right, on both counts. a) The Fediverse as it is right now does not support good self-care tools. Which is a shame, because these could be probably easily implemented. Someone "just" needs to build a client that handles these things. (https://phanpy.social/#/ for example corrects a lot of gripes for me. Not perfect though...) b) People telling others they are fediversing wrong are the worst :) You're 100% right. The assumptions that Mastodon (specifically Mastodon) has no longer hold true. They did for a while, back in 2017/2018, but they no longer do, and in the meantime those assumptions have become "Fediverse assumptions". (one last one last point) Another thing I want y'all to know - the reason I've been boosting my replies to annoying folks lately? It's to try and give a signal to those folks *and others* that I find that behavior unacceptable. That is something this platform desperately needs - like it or not, some of the features of other platforms allow the crowd to signal what's good and bad. That is its own form of moderation. Like giving digital side-eye. Its absence here isn't all good.  @TechConnectify I think there's a subtle difference between Masto and Xitter: in X, you'd get notified if somebody retweeted a reply. So if you retweeted your own reply in an argument, it looked egotistical. Masto doesn't treat likes/retoots of toots that are replies to your toots as worth notifying about, so I'm much more willing to use the "retoot" button on my own replies to put them into my followers' feed. I still think they should make that more visible and explicit tho.  @TechConnectify I figured that was what you were doing, some instances do have that feature but the Masto project doesn't want it because of its history of abuse on other platforms. I'm not sure that's a good reason anymore given people pile on either way. @gudenau I'm glad you figured that out. A whole lotta "just ignore them!" folks don't seem to understand that they're asking me to ignore a wasp nest as the wasps keep stinging me. The nest needs to be dealt with. @gudenau @TechConnectify Mastodon is stupid for that. Pleroma gives me a lot of features that were deliberately excluded from Mastodon, like search.
 @TechConnectify i'm not social aware enough to parse the dynamics of 'the ratio' but it seems to be a big signifier of derision elsewhere, is that a related mechanism to what ypure trying?  @engarneering @TechConnectify Most of what I've seen on Mastodon in the last year tells me that it's probably not a great metric here, but maybe we don't have enough celebrity due to the issues raised above.  @TechConnectify was thinking about this over coffee, idly hoping the reply-guys wouldn’t scare you off the platform. I think those boosts are perfect: it’s a way of expressing a social norm to your followers (and I think most of us agree with you!) so keep ‘em coming! @TechConnectify I love your videos and your comments and I love the occasional snark I’ve seen on both Twitter and Mastodon. If the presence of too many ignorant boorish reply guys makes you stop posting here I for one will miss you but you have to look after yourself, no-one should expect anyone else to put up with that kind of crap just for their entertainment.  @TechConnectify my feeling is that lazy mode filtering should be a plugin or a bot, not part of the Mastodon. The latter should make the platform pluggable and let people choose their algo  Not so much on your posts, but I've started replying "Mute" to people just before I mute them (that is, when the muting is for them being jerkish, not when I'm just not interested in their stuff). As it is, jerks have the power to take over a discussion. We have to find ways to push back.  I regularly mute people I love to follow and read; I don’t think a value assessment should be attached to that action, nor assumed to be there. @TechConnectify I 100% agree with you, but... as someone watching you and all these reply guys, it is like being stuck in a bad business meeting I can yell about Robert's Rules of Order and criticize people all they want, but it will only add to the noise and make the problem worse I try to add good vibes because I dig what you do, and I also dig your critical commentary on this platform, but I can't even nudge those folks  @billjings @TechConnectify this is my experience as well. I was kind of having an argument yesterday with someone who completely lacked the self awareness to understand what they were doing. So trying to push back on stuff just stresses me out without having even the slightest impact on the other person @TechConnectify I'm sorry to hear you're running into the results of… … …eight years of the Mastodon project's lead ignoring or half-assing every single safety suggestion made by numerous volunteers on the project. ☠️ You're entirely right to be annoyed, really. In hastily trying to be Not Twitter, while being led by designers who didn't truly understand what was wrong with Twitter, the resulting product created all sorts of new annoyances and harassment techniques. It's not good!!  @TechConnectify Yeah, I only have 3K-ish followers but I still see what you describe. The original mastodon greybeard crowd just LOVE to reply-guy that 'you're doing it wrong'. I do hope you can weather the storm as I very much enjoy your posts and hope you stay. But I totally understand if it's too much. Just hoping life-finds-a-way @sewblue I agree completely. I understand the aversion to quote-toots given the harassment angle, but they were also very valuable in shaping culture, discourse, and expectations. They were an opportunity to learn *from the crowd* whereas here, every piece of feedback is direct. And in my position, some people delight in taking pot-shots. It sucks. I know for a fact that's happening all the time in my YT comments, but the system design there makes it so I'm unaware of it. I want that here.  @TechConnectify @sewblue something I see from time to time folks doing is a "DIY quote toot" , I think there was something similar on early twitter not sure tho , is writing a comment with "RE: [link to post]" at the end + mentioning the user so they get a notification about it . Not perfect but it exists ig , also hope its not something you mentioned already :neofox_sweat: , sorry if you did Also yes I know its not something which solves all your problems hope it didn't feel like that >-< @sewblue @TechConnectify I think that part of that is because mastodon never considered that there would be huge disagreements between users. It was crated before the twitter issues were a thing. @TechConnectify man, I really want to look into making some kind of server side filtering using Bayesian filters, because I want folks like you in my timeline.   @SymTrkl Honestly, should it be baffling? We are different people who did different things on Twitter. I know Twitter was much more of a headache (or even legit life-threatening) for people not-like-me. I don't hold it up as a gold standard or anything - I'm just trying to get folks to understand that there were things there that might be worth looking at. @SymTrkl Also, FWIW, I joined Twitter pretty late and the quality filter was turned on by default. I've noticed a lot of folks who have no idea what I mean by it or find it utterly impossible that my experience on Twitter might have been more peaceful than here. I joined in 2018. From what I've heard, if you were there prior to 2016-17 the quality filter was opt-in. So you might not have experienced it. But depending on how you used Twitter, it may still not have mattered. @TechConnectify I don't think the people who are telling you block or mute others mean it in a bad way, but rather most people can't really do anything to help. They aren't programmers or moderators. It's a band-aid and the best solution available at this moment. It should be better, but it's not right now :/ @TechConnectify I was kinda expecting, after losing API access, companies like Hootsuite or Sproutsocial would maybe pivot to Mastodon to the point where maybe they'd start building their own client and server software and white label instances for brands. It might still happen, but I'm not expecting it anymore. Brands are happy enough on Threads. I think it's pretty clear that Mastodon's current tooling doesn't meet your use case. But better tooling is possible here.  @TechConnectify This is a very interesting take. I see now why you say that the Fediverse does not scale well for "influencers". X's approach that works seems to be against the very heart of what Mastodon, at least, is about (no algorithms). Maybe Lemmy (the Reddit alternative) could be a better approach with its rating system. But Lemmy isn't really made for blogs like this. @TechConnectify It doesn't have to be contrary to the design vision as long as it's optional and opt-in. Would be glad to see more suggestions for an implementation from knowledgeable developers here. I'm sorry but I'm not experienced enough to code it.  Hey, you are absolutely correct that these people do not know what it looks like on your side. I really do not want to make any contribs to mastodon or misskey (maybe it would be different for Akkoma but whatever), but would you help me with the requirements of an alternative client software to handle users such as you? I want to help, but I do not have enough data for that Honestly, you've put more energy into trying to make this work than I would have. My guess is that you're probably going to end up leaving, so while you're still here I'll take the opportunity to say "Thanks for giving it a try, and see you on YouTube". (And good luck with the Xmas lights! )  For clarity's sale it might help if you told us who's responsibility you feel it is to be "taking control of your experience"? @JustinH The people building the product. And I'm sorry, but I'm not so ideologically committed to this project to become one of those people. So - either some folks who understand the needs to large-follower accounts need to speak up and steer the ship, or I'll consider this ship a lost cause. @TechConnectify These (mostly volunteer) people specifically? https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/graphs/contributors Not trying to sealion you, but I hesitate to think of Mastodon (the software) as a "product" since nothing is for sale? Like, from my perspective, since nobody owns or controls Mastodon (again, referring to the software, not any instances), we are *all* responsible for "building the product", to whatever degree we choose to exercise that responsibility (or not). @JustinH I know you're not trying to sealion me, but gosh does it feel like it. You want this to be a place people want to be? Then you need it to be attractive to all people. And I have had actual conversation now with folks in this project which makes me feel as though my concerns will never be taken seriously. Honestly, I think that's because the general attitude is "this is everybody's responsibility" - but I'm here to tell you that attitude means nothing gets done. @JustinH And also? The whole "just use this other client/fork/instance" thing is utterly confusing to navigate for average folks. There's a lot of expertise shared by the most prolific people here that isn't actually common - but the shared experience suggests it is. @TechConnectify Idk I doubt mas.to is trying to be "attractive to all people" (and if they are, they are clearly failing lol). But when hosting is paid for by donations and the work of moderating is performed by volunteers, there is basically no incentive for a single instance to grow perpetually. I'm not saying you're wrong to desire a less hands-on experience, just that expecting it (for free) is is a fool's errand. (yadda yadda yadda on corporate media you are the product) @JustinH to be clear, I am not expecting it for free. But until someone gives me the tiniest bit of confidence that they understand and sympathize with my concerns (which I will be honest, I am not hearing from you) thinking that I will contribute is a fool's errand. @TechConnectify I'm assuming people have suggested starting a bounty for the changes you want? That's the usual path for non-programmers to accelerate creation of new features in FOSS projects. On another note, I've had a business idea for a while now to run an small, but aggressively moderated instance for the follower-privileged folk who don't want Twitter/BlueSky/Threads. I doubt your experience is unique. Maybe it's time to get serious about exploring that!  @TechConnectify It may be irritating, but it's what's available with the Mastodon/Fediverse software that is available now. It would be possible to add automated filtering to Mastodon; but it's a big, thorny project. And Mastodon has just two full time developers, as far as I know, plus a number of part time volunteer contributors. Meanwhile, it took Twitter quite a while to develop this kind of automated filtering, with over a thousand engineers and tons of capital. @TechConnectify I’m sorry your experience isn’t great. I can’t even imagine how it must be to have that many nerdy followers. My tiny account mostly goes unnoticed, and it’s kind of great. I hesitate to suggest you do that because then I wouldn’t see your posts. But if you’re looking for social engagement with a small cultivated group, not mass business promotion, maybe get an alt? And stop monitoring notifications on the business account. Even though I’d be sad. |
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