The burning of the Library of Alexandria for fandoms
taylorlorenz.substack.com
I've never been on twitter, but I'm not that surprised so many of us here were driving engagement.
I've never been on twitter, but I'm not that surprised so many of us here were driving engagement.
Surely this could be good, right?
If celebrities need to be accessible to their biggest fans, maybe it would induce them to leave the birdsite? And if this is as big a migration as the article suggests, it has the potential to snowball in network effects, giving other influential users one less reason to feel chained to a dumpster fire.
People haven't adjusted yet to the reality that online social ecosystems matter, they affect so much in the real world. Decimating multiple online spaces in such a short time has consequences and i hate that a handful of random guys with no stake in any of it except money get to make decisions like that.
Such is the fate of hypercentralized spaces. The fediverse fixes this.
Hopefully the next places will be more durable. It is still SAD and damaging when vibrant communities get destroyed though. I am more lamenting that.
Damn, real shame that.
Oh well.
The Great Shopping Mall of Alexandria
Well, if they are smart they will just migrate to Bluesky.
I gave up on trying to get people to Mastodon.
What's the problem? They're just not sure which instance to go with?
Its the absolute lack of algorithm. No, really. I know Mastodon toots it as a feature, but without an algorithm to keep people scrolling most people just close the app and do something else. People who don't understand instances would just go to mastodon.social anyway, but since no mastodon instance is actively trying to keep its users engaged 24/7, people naturally realize they have better things to do than to use social media all say.
Which is better for humanity, but bad for retention.
"It's the absolute lack of a way to game the system with engagement bait and reward rage-posting"
Fixed that for you.
It's not a matter for average users, it's a matter for the people who farm engagement and post 300 times per day. Having a space that isn't dominated by accounts like that is a good thing. It's why Threads is such a miserable place. The algo there is aggressive and heavily rewards this kind of shit. Accounts like that provide no value and create toxic spaces full of rage and misinformation just to keep the waters churning and keep a constant flow of vapid "content". It's gross, and we are so much the better if we lose a ton of them.
From a content creator's standpoint, sure. The issue is that when the end user doesn't have a shiny new thing they're interested in in front of them every 30 or so seconds they just log off and stop using the service. Why use mastodon if bluesky/threads/whatever shows them, generally, more of what they want to see and less of what they don't?
Most people are using social media as a way to veg out and unwind these days. They don't really care if somebody is able to game the system, just that they see more that lets them veg out (or alternatively makes them angry, driving increased engagement).
I agree that this is generally bad, but trying to sidestep it completely like Mastodon is is just going to result in a network that never hits the critical mass necessary to start exponential growth.
Great, so the perverse incentives aren't beatable then. Time to bug lawmakers, I guess?
On the bright side, Lemmy feels just about like Reddit to use, so that bodes well for us.
Why are they all Brazilian?
Like the “Come to Brazil!” comments on every music video or concert on youtube.
Honest quetion, what's a stan account?
From How To Geek.
Originally it was a portmanteau of "stalker-fan." Think "super fan."
It was actually a reference to Eminem's song "Stan" about an insane fan who murders his family or something.
Might be both!
Ooooooohhh! I never made that connection.
Let's take that etymology one step further: "fan" comes from "fanatic", so a stan is a stalker fanatic. Which somehow has become a positive term in some circles.