The fediverse, too, trends towards social pathologies; something or some things is causing craziness on all the mentioned platforms, even if the exact manifestations vary. For example, well into 2023, almost daily among the top-ranking posts on Mastodon was one advocating for harsh anti-Covid measures: e.g. that live music and theatre should never have been permitted again, insisting on masking in public at all times, etc. This was after countries lauded for their responsible Covid response had already returned to normality. The fact that posts like these could get such a welcome reception, sending them to the top, says something about how highly online and out of touch a significant portion of fediverse users are.
>But we’ve seen you disingenuously try to downplay issues here with the fediverse before.
Who is "we?" Jumping immediately into the defensive and accusatory personal attack? I don't know what caused you to harbor this sort of grudge against the fediverse and people who use it but get over it. Just let people have their space, and find your own.
But look at the Trending view right now (and tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that). The Mastodon instance with the highest prestige isn’t showing from those “tens of thousands of instances” a wide variety of subject matter discussed in longform, nuanced manner. It’s showing mainly political posts and memes. It depicts the fediverse as pathological a forum as any of the other microblogging platforms, even if the particular politics differ.
Even if some people across instances use the fediverse to discuss other matters, a healthy ecosystem would be one that discourages highly-online stuff, not does the opposite and boosts its visibility.
> Just let people have their space, and find your own.
The whole topic of this subthread was about people leaving X and possibly finding another space. I’m showing why those people might not “find their own” in the fediverse (or at Threads or Bluesky, for that matter) and would be better off avoiding microblogging entirely.
It's not because they love Musk, the network effects are just too strong. Media companies mostly set up Bluesky accounts, for example, but they get a fraction of the traffic there. Many elected officials just stayed on X, or if they set up accounts on other platforms they underused or abandoned those which did not get a lot of traffic. World leaders are all still on X. I think it's foolish to blame individual users for 'not leaving hard enough' when all but a very few of them have too little influence to overcome the 'gravity' of the market leader.
It's hard to tell how many people have left, but it's clearly significant.
No, it's really not. It's full of the most vapid posts imaginable increasingly written by AI.
I would also wish to point out lemmy is an interesting project too.
I don't really use twitter anyway but I was frequent on bluesky but didn't really get any responses whatsoever sometimes so I ended up not using it either.
Hackernews and some other forums are honestly just about it for me at a certain point but I do wish to relook at bluesky and mastodon
You don't have 200 good insights per day that the world absolutely needs to hear...
What you're describing is more akin to what MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, etc were like back in the day, which is quite a different thing than tumblr or twitter.
Signed up, got a notice 30 seconds later I needed to give my phone number.
Me: fuck that, what do the need that for.
Twitter a week later: Oh, by the way we gave all your phone numbers to hackers because we suck.
If one don't pay, the algorithm (I believe?) ranks your comment at the bottom of the blue check marks and it's rare to get any sort of engagement.
I expect the same algorithm ranking with new posts.
I read but rarely engage as what's the point.
(And 0 replies)
They obviously have the means to pay for professional-level access.
Hitting the limit should unironically be a sign to go outside and touch grass.
Staying on X associates you with crypto scams, rage bait content and worse.
1) People I know personally follow me and if I delete my account my username will be farmed by bots and I don't want those people harassed and scammed.
2) Following Aya Nishitani.