 I no longer use Big Social, but here’s my current opinion of it: A message should be a message. You should be able to see any message as intended. Instead, people are forced to use screenshots in order to share messages across platforms. The fact that Meta, Google, Twitter, etc. won’t let a message be a message is an indictment of their platforms’ ongoing destruction of the open web. The Fediverse’s promise is that—hopefully and finally—messages will be treated as messages. People ask, “How much of Mastodon’s growth is due to bots?” It’s not the driving force of growth but it is a factor. Much numerical growth comes from big servers like mastodon.social and mstdn.social. The fastest growing servers tend to be flipboard.social, me.dm, and social.vivaldi.net. But bot-driven spam servers like ai.wiki exist, and they grew by 907 accounts during the past month. Yes, ai.wiki should be put on #Fediblock. Good thing we can quarantine and block that domain!  The fastest growing servers tend to be flipboard.social, me.dm, and social.vivaldi.net. Sad To give an idea about why ai.wiki should be put on #Fediblock, take a look at their about page where they trumpet “benefits to businesses”. The so-called “business” they attract are spammers. Take a look at their local feed, and you’ll quickly surmise that this server exists for spam. Bots and spammers are here. Thankfully, we have tools to combat them.  @atomicpoet Also worth noting that while spam bots are awful, bots are not necessarily bad! Some of us enjoy Birdsite mirror bots. Photo bots do a great job of some timeline zen. AITA bot is a nice way to get some Reddit highlights. Lots of great bots are out there to improve the Mastodon experience! According to @mastodonusercount, there are currently 10,643,452 Mastodon accounts. At current rates, 300,000 new accounts are created per week. One month after reaching 10 million Mastodon accounts, it's highly likely we'll reach 11 million accounts by next week.
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 @atomicpoet @mastodonusercount @fediversenews Caveat: I added the caveat because my question is deeply genuine: how many of those accounts are real? At minimum, are the *clearly fake* nefarious (such as those you've recommended blocking before--thank you, btw!) taken out of that metric? @atomicpoet @mastodonusercount @fediversenews What is the MAU Monthly Average Users for Mastodon? Having an account is not useful as some account holders could be like me who may use Mastodon once a month. Pinterest and Google might be teaming up in a “media network partnership”. Which might mean that you’ll be seeing more Pinterest stuff in your Google searches. To keep themselves relevant, we’re going to see Big Social announcing more “partnerships” in the future. https://www.tipranks.com/news/analyst-praises-pinterest-as-it-may-team-up-with-google
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 @atomicpoet I really think there will come a time when I just don't want to get on Google anymore. What a coincidence! Dogecoin prices spiked when Twitter replaced their logo with that Shiba Inu meme. Nope, nothing untoward is happening here.
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 In a more conventional interpretation of the laws, intentional overt *Market Manipulation* would be considered illegal. @atomicpoet I really don't understand why, iirc musk is currently under investigation exactly because of stuff like this... why prove regulators right As @rom points out, Death is coming for Big Social. It’s time to move off those services. And where to move? The Fediverse! (On another note, I’m seeing lots of enthusiasm about the Fediverse amongst Filipino academics.) https://mb.com.ph/2023/4/2/why-aren-t-you-on-the-fediverse-yet  @atomicpoet @rom @fediversenews Hipster thought of the day: I was on the fediverse before it was cool :blobcatcoffee: @atomicpoet @rom @fediversenews when something big dies you want to make sure your not standing where the carcass is landing... @atomicpoet @rom @fediversenews Twitter is mostly shit now. I'm still there only bcuz many I follow are not on #mastodon Finally back in Canada. I spent two days in airports. Collectively, I was in four airports in Malaysia, South Korea, USA, and Canada. In that time span, I went from 35°C heat to 5°C cold. I had this realization when I was in an American airport. American customer support systems suck. They’re disorganized, and much more work than they’re worth. But American customer support representatives? The best in the world. You almost want to forgive Americans’ poor systems since their reps are first class. Almost—but there’s a caveat. The poor reps have to deal with the terrible systems, and the systems owe them a clear debt.   In Malaysia, I got valuable feedback about the Fediverse. Namely, two things about Malaysians: 1. Unless you're a gamer, no one owns a desktop or laptop. However, it is common to own more than one Android smartphone. 2. P2P social networking is not feasible, and people don't trust locally-hosted servers. This is because people fear their own governments more than they fear foreign-owned corporations. It's not uncommon for people to get arrested for what's on their phones.
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2. Lowyat Forum (basically the Malaysian reddit) has been online since 2002 Lol, not sure about ur sources but are we talking about the same Malaysia here?  @atomicpoet When I think about the fediverse, I don't think Mastodon is the killer app for mass adoption on the Malaysian context. The most popular social media is tiktok, followed by Facebook and Instagram. The twitter format isn't exactly popular here and most are passive users that don't use it for discussions. From my personal experience most use it because it's easy to get news updates fast and to follow viral topics. Mastodon doesn't fit the use case by design. Fediverse.observer suddenly counts 150,112 Brighteon accounts. Personally, I believe these are bots. That is, if this count is accurate at all—which I doubt. I am glad that fediverse.observer counts Brighteon separately from Mastodon because they are clearly different services. From a UI/UX perspective, they’re nothing alike. @atomicpoet already blocked brighteon.social - what I saw already looked pretty bot/propaganda driven.  @atomicpoet Isn't brighteon run by a right-wing dingus who got kicked off Facebook for bot trolling?
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... and people talk about the con artists that hyped up cryptocurrencies... EVERYONE knew Quibi was going to fail--- except I guess Reese Witherspoon's now ex-husband who's living in a trailer park I believe. 
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@atomicpoet I'm surprised it took them this long to join Mastodon. So much easier than pandering to a billionaire manchild if i might inquire, can you tell me what you consider misinformation, please? i have zero interest in anything a bot says anyway, i'm just curious. feel free to ignore, i won't take it personally.  @atomicpoet jesus christ that crazy. You guys are crazy. Calling out people in a physical world to use Fediverse? Come on man, people can make their own choices. If they prefer #Twitter or whatever media it is, that means they prefer it and THAT'S IT! Like, insisting people on switching to #Fediverse is a really bad idea. If they would want, they will switch, but only if they want to do so, by themself! Like, come on, let's make give people right to make their own choices... The greatest story about social media. I don't think it gets better. In November 2022, @TexasObserver became one of the first newspapers to start their own Mastodon server. Unlike most newspapers, @TexasObserver operates as a non-profit. This week, the non-profit’s board of directors voted to disband @TexasObserver. But within 48 hours, people have given $250,000 so it can continue to exist. https://www.gofundme.com/f/laid-off-texas-observer-journalists-and-staff
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@atomicpoet @TexasObserver @fediversenews In other words, why are supporters willing to make donations, but not subscribe? @atomicpoet @TexasObserver @fediversenews I don't love the tone of the board's apology and I like Ms. Holmes's statement even less. Both feel very much like "yeah we are sorry but look we fundraised and fixed it" when to my understanding the fundraising had nothing to do with the board. To everyone trying to police what I write about: Block me or I’ll block you :thinkerguns:
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 @atomicpoet LOL. Filters, mutes and blocks, so many ways for folk to choose what they want to exclude from their feeds, but some still want to put the burden of their mindsets on others.  @atomicpoet this sounds a bit like my mother but if a lot of people are trying to police your speech, at least it means a lot of people are moved by what you're writing about.
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@atomicpoet I'm still getting unpaid accounts when twitter switch me to 'For You'..obviously I switch back to 'Following' ASAP when I've realised! @atomicpoet I've now spent enough time on the Fediverse that I'm convinced it's the future of the Internet, and I'm all in. 🎧 PODCAST ALERT 🎧 @Gargron just got featured on Decoder with Nilay Patel, and the interview is incredibly educational. It gives a brief history of Mastodon, and offer clues about where it might go next. Here’s the transcript: https://www.theverge.com/23658648/mastodon-ceo-twitter-interview-elon-musk-twitter @atomicpoet @Gargron @fediversenews It was a great episode! Not only because of the Mastodon discussion but for also being a rare, hopeful vision of making the internet better. I also caught the comment Nilay made about being on Mastodon, wish he confirmed his user name. @atomicpoet @Gargron @fediversenews .. great episode. Looking forward to new features like Groups. Was hoping to hear a feature like Twitter Spaces.. one day perhaps. For the past 6 hours, there’s been 2,000+ Mastodon account creations per hour. This hasn’t happened since December 2022. @mmasnick predicted that Elon Musk’s new Twitter Blue policies would result in another Mastodon migration, and it looks like he’s right. Once Twitter effectively becomes “pay to play”, Mastodon suddenly becomes more appealing. https://mastodon.social/@mastodonusercount/110102918619817258
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@atomicpoet @mmasnick @fediversenews Aren't a lot of these bots, as you pointed out here?  @atomicpoet I see posts from another Mastodon statistics account that puts user count in the 6M range. Any idea why there's a difference? @atomicpoet Nowadays, it seems as though Big Social’s value is tied to impressions. There’s numerous problems with this: 1. What counts as an impression? And why is this measurement trustworthy? 2. Why are so much impressions passive? On Twitter, why — despite millions of views — are so few people willing to like, comment or retweet? 3. If lurkers are Big Social’s most treasured audience, to what end and for what purpose? Much of social media analytics is bullshit, but impressions are even more so.
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@atomicpoet same end and purpose as eyeballs watching TV. Impressions are passive because not everyone cares to engage/comment. I don't think this is anything new. Think how few ever bothered to write a letter to the local paper - most just read it. Doesn't mean it wasn't valuable.  @atomicpoet there's a reason this post is one of our most popular of all time: https://www.techdirt.com/2016/09/26/traffic-is-fake-audience-numbers-are-garbage-nobody-knows-how-many-people-see-anything/ @atomicpoet Unlike Twitter, this Mastodon poll is free. Anonymous poll
Poll
Yay!
359
94.7%
Nay!
379 people voted. 20
5.3%
Voting ended 29 Mar 2023 at 11:12.
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 Jeez. Is the Space Karen charging for polls now? Has he tried looking for loose change under sofa cushions? @atomicpoet Absolutely blows me away Elmo is so clueless. I mean - everyone hated the For You tab anyway. But it'll drive all the influencers away as they rebel against having to pay for access. It'll ruin the platform's reach as people silo more than they were. I mean, just light the $44 Billion on fire and enjoy a beer with it. Why go through so much public humiliation? |
Gregory's Server
@atomicpoet Reminds me of people sending screenshots as word documents in email.
@atomicpoet This is also a bit of a problem with some fedi instances --- text shouldn't have arbitrary small limits -- you should easily be able to write an entire blog post in a message just fine.
@atomicpoet This thread should be enshrined somehow.