Is this the future of social media? It certainly is better than Silicon Valley/commercial-surveillance disinformation platforms by orders of magnitude, yes...
...but personally, I have a different view.
I recommend reading the "Public Service Internet" manifesto. It was a privilege to read it. This is one of my greater research interests as well.
Tl;dr: an internet infrastructure of the people, by the people, and for the people — including democratic governance, user representation (suffrage), and citizen co-ownership of resources. NOT government-owned.
Of course there are some bits I disagree with too.
One could argue Mastodon/Fediverse is like that... but not truly (I like the place though). Here's why →
Above all, they should not be imitations of commercial media platforms.
The reason why things like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, TikTok, and others succeeded (initially) was because they were unique at the time (well, Vine and TikTok are the same, FB and MySpace, MSN and Skype, etc., but you get me).
Pixelfed, PeerTube, Mastodon — these are all just their commercial media peers, except decentralised, distributed, and surveillance free (varies instance to instance).
I’ve been here for a while now. Don’t lose heart, though, if you’ve found your place in the Fediverse:
There are two ways you can take this.
That means this whole thing was a waste of time and amounted to nothing!
All our time spent here + time we will spend here can lay technological/social foundations for what can become a “public service internet” — initiatives like ActivityPub and the Fediverse are things we can build on.
I prefer the latter.
My time here is temporary — but I won’t move “back” to SV media like threads, new commercial media, or stuff like Bluesky.
I’ll wait until public service internet is a thing. Remember, this is a social element that requires social efforts/ideas rather than technological ones. We can’t tech our way out of social problems.
Interoperability. The ability of such a platform to talk to other platforms as well as an opt-out function. To eliminate switching costs so that users will never be trapped on a platform or by code again.
@pluralistic explains this in better words than I do in his book, The Internet Con (also a recommended read).
Most folks on the #Fediverse will go - I told you so! But #Substack's design and content choices is fostering a social "class" system of elites, followers and outsiders.
To read this post you'd need to subscribe. It's a sensitive one.
My year with Mastodon (#MastodonWrapped)
I celebrated my first #Mastoversary a few days ago. It’s been a good first year on Mastodon for me; I like the #Fediverse idea, I like people here, and I like the calm vibe this place offers.
Also, I ditched all of my other #SocialMedia accounts. All but one.¹
As I say, Mastodon is a good #platform to be, however there are a couple of things I’ve been struggling with the whole time. I’m going to put together a brief summary below in hope that someone can help me with them.
¹ I still keep Instagram to exchange cute pics of sloths and pandas, and ice-hockey reels with my sons. 😁
2/
The thing that buggers me the most is boosting.
I know boosting is important because it’s the only way to spread the news around as there are no #algorithms here to force-feed us what they “think” is good for us, and I’m quite a #booster myself, too. But I’ve cut back a bit recently for a simple reason: I can’t hide boosted posts from my #profile.
I mean, when someone views my profile I want them to see my toots first so they can get an idea of who I am and, conversely, when I visit someone else’s profile I prefer to see what they have to say.
If you’re a generous booster but not so creative in the “#ContentCreation” department, just like me, you get a profile full of re-blogged posts where your original #toots are hard to find. And no, #Pinned toots don’t do the trick.
If there’s a #hack to work around this, I would much appreciate if you share it here.
@xl8freelancer
Caveat: These tips work for the web interface. I don't use any apps.
When looking at someone else's profile you can eliminate boosts by clicking on the "Posts and Replies" tab. Still has replies but does leave out boosts.
Do you know about Just My Toots? Here's an link for my posts:
Interesting investigation by Novaya Gazeta Europe demonstrating that, of the 1.3 million pro-war Russian social media posts (VK) they analysed, almost half were copy-pasted, and the majority were posted by state employees.
The findings are not surprising given what we know about Russian online information manipulation. Nonetheless, it's yet another cautionary message to not interpret Russian social media posts as authentic speech.
@academicchatter I recently published something on my personal website for the first time, and accidentally bumped into some interesting data on the #academic reach of #socialmedia.
I shared the content on #Mastodon first (November 1), and on #Twitter the day after. On November 20 I edited the post here, leading to two new boosts.
My toot received 6 boosts and 7 stars; my tweet got 6 retweets and 38 hearts. Yet, in terms of website traffic the two dates of Mastodon activity outperform Twitter.
@ahimsa_pdx@academicchatter This is how I interpret it, yes! I did share the draft with some colleagues the day before (giving a tiny bump of traffic), but the visits on November 1 should be mostly due to Mastodon. There also seems to be an effect bleeding into the day after a post was published, meaning that the Twitter number is probably slightly inflated.
It makes sense in a way, considering that Twitter has been taking steps to avoid people clicking links and leaving their site.
Fifteen years before the commercialization of the internet, millions of amateurs across North America created more than 100,000 small-scale computer networks. The people who built and maintained these dial-up bulletin board systems (BBSs) in the 1980s laid the groundwork for millions of others who would bring their lives online in the 1990s and beyond.
@appassionato@bookstodon Wow, gotta read this one. Except I was there the first time (American Tune BBS was me). I should get a copy to show somebody's grandkids, though.
Our CEO, @mike just launched a new podcast series titled "Dot Social" to explore the evolution of the internet and how new open standards, like #ActivityPub, can forever change the web and the world of social media.
Very grateful to receive the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) Early Career Award for my research on the visible and invisible mechanisms of information control in authoritarian states
Receiving this prize truly is an honour, and I'm particularly grateful to the institutions (and mentors!) that have supported me in pursuing research across established disciplinary boundaries, including:
Maastricht University (FASoS), University of Helsinki (HCAS & Aleksanteri Institute), Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS), NWO, Helsingin Sanomat Foundation, Leibniz IOS Regensburg, Leibniz Institute for Media Research (Hans Bredow Institute).
Such awards tend to reinforce the idea of 'individual excellence' in academic research and push collaboration to the background. I'm immensely grateful to my co-authors, collaborators and network.
The best research emerges when we think together #TeamScience
Israel’s #hasbara has officially gone into overdrive, or possibly becoming more desperate. This simulation of a terrorist attack in #London (guess it has nothing to do with London seeing the biggest demonstrations in support of #Palestine) on #Xmas day is supposed to “make Brits feel what it’s like to be ‘in our shoes’ for a minute or two,” according to one of the producers.
——-
London.
Christmas Day.
Your home and dear ones.
What if it were you?
In Israel these days, nothing gets past #hasbara unnoticed.
"People in #Israel, #Gaza and the West Bank are reeling from the repercussions of the 7 October attacks on Israel by the militant organization #Hamas ..."
@Free_Press Love the alt text here. In addition to being disgusting scum anti-semite, racist, pro Putin traitor, he's also a dweeb. Cowboy hat on backwards. Stupid fuckwad
How are #altmetrics services adjusting for the decline of #Twitter, especially #AcademicTwitter? Are they giving Twitter mentions less weight? Are they tracking mentions in other social-media platforms? If so, which platforms? Where do they think academics are going? Do they have good data?
@egonw@petersuber@academicchatter yeah I'm waiting to see if/how AltMetric responds. They can track any website you alert them to for links to papers, so maybe each Mastodon instance would be equivalent? But something like Bluesky with fewer instances might be more feasible...