I've stumbled across this post by an ex-COBOL admin YouTube creator I've been following after wondering why she wasn't active on Mastodon.
Definitely some interesting and nuanced points being made there.
She also previously did a video about Mastodon / Fediverse: https://youtube.com/watch?v=mqocW7DUFpg - But that was before she left Mastodon.
This is interesting. I don’t find that she’s hating on the tool at all - I think she’s frustrated by negative interactions that sap her energy, has taken note of that, and is explaining her absence.
I both agree and disagree with some of the comments. Until very recently my interactions with the internet have been fairly shallow and that has protected me in some ways. But I think some people are looking for community, and want to give a bit more of themselves to form deeper connections. I think others are trying to grow an audience - reading the comments is not much different than surveying your customers.
Veronica seems really lovely, and I hope this helps make her life happier.
Here's my "reply-guy" comment of the day: if you are posting about where you buy your wall decoration and you get negative feedback, well, maybe it's not worth to tell strangers where you buy wall decoration.
But sometimes somebody puts a lot of effort on creating things for other people to enjoy. It can be a youtube video, a tutorial, a technical opinion. Or curl[^1].
Feedback provided on such an effort often takes a minuscule fraction of the work the creator put in, and they can be really nasty.
I just think that providing opinions should require some effort. An affordable amount of effort, but not too low. Maybe if I do something worth of notice someday, I'll invite feedback by creating a public Minecraft server and asking people to log in there and post their comments on the book at coordinates 1000, -58, 1000.
[^1]: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/04/22/curl-is-just-the-hobb...
The only solution I can think of is smarter algorithms that hide negativity and other unwanted comments. Yes you could limit replies, but that doesn't solve the problem for big accounts, their followers have all kinds of unhinged people who like to ask trivial questions and waste your time.
Some think that by changing a service they can get better replies, but there will be no single service that has "sane commenters". This shouldn't be surprising, I saw in Threads complaints that replies had "Facebook vibe", or a common complaint about Mastodon that there were too many geeky reply-guys.
Services should have good filtering in place. A lot of big accounts don't have time to read replies, and they probably shouldn't for their own sanity, but they probably want to see replies from people they follow, i.e. their peers.
I find that Mastodon has become the mirror-verse version of Twitter/X. I've tried spending time on there but unless if you subscribe to certain political/ideological values then you wont find much to hang around for.
On the flip side I find the discourse on X a lot more varied. There are definitely big problems with the types of conversations that happen on X but I have to go out of my way to find them. On Mastodon it's not that hard, mainly down to it being a smaller pool of content.
ActivityPub/Mastodon is flawed at its core with its concept of federation. They paint a pretty utopian picture of decentralised communities but there really isn't much difference between them. They are mostly part of the same political zeitgeist and if you don't toe the line you get banned. Once you're banned that's it, you've lost your profile, sure you can recreate elsewhere but have to start from scratch.
For the problems alternatives have like Nostr at least they are truly censorship resistant.
Back in the day, people used to make the infamous "quitting this forum" post. Is this the same thing, but in 2024?
It's truly disheartening. Instead of embracing the practice of quietly observing, some individuals feel compelled to disparage those they view as less knowledgeable (often inaccurately) in a communal setting.
Lack of nuance, and taking things too personal, was why I also left fedi back in 2022. Had been running an instance since 2017.
But in the past 2 years I've realized that you should just ignore the haters. They're on youtube too and I don't get involved with them there, so why do I focus on them elsewhere?
No need.
So I'm actually going to return with a personal instance, simply because I enjoy having somewhere to post random pics and stuff when I'm not by a computer, using my phone. I don't care if anyone follows.
Kudos on stopping. I’ve cut out several of the platforms from my life. The grief of unchecked “opinions”, some of which are enhanced by algorithms, is simply not worth whatever dopamine you get from likes or whatever.
What's interesting here is that many of 'us' and the current mainstream say that Internet toxicity is due to The Algorithm, the methods of Facebook/twitter that maximise engagement leading to constant negativity and toxicity.
Mastodon's big selling point during the big move away from Twitter/X was the absence of The Algorithm, it was supposed to be a friendly, geeky thing, free from monetised outrage. But I've seen it for myself, there's an undercurrent of Twitter's holier-than-thou outrage, it's just from different sources: part exclusionary crusty geeks who've always used Mastodon ('you use Windows???'), part exclusionary leftists ('you're with the Judean People's Front????').
Perhaps it's not always The Algorithm that's to blame.
Ultimately it's not a question of agreeing or disagreeing, it's a question of respect. We live in a world where either you agree with me in everything or you must be destroyed.
The lack of nuance is spot on. The web went from long content in homepages/blogs, to short posts on social medias, to "like" and "share" buttons (1-bit)... it's hard to have nuance when you only take 2 seconds to form your opinion.
Hopefully some time away does them well. I hope they find their way back, in healthier portions
It's a tough knob to dial, attention/engagement. Too much of a thing. Not even going to try to say good/bad/whatever. The internet is what we make of it. I hope they return to strengthen it.
This is something I'm working on now, in a different avenue. Work. I changed jobs last week because I was putting too much of myself in, and not getting enough out.
> I toot about Matrix, and I’ve got reply-guys berating me for not using XMPP instead.
Huh, those are extremely contrarian reply-guys; if anything I would expect the opposite.
Setting my mastodon account to locked (followers have to be approved) was the best social media choice I've ever made.
I did not hear 'reply guy' before joining mastodon.
If you're posting short messages with a reply text box, you can expect to get replies, and the replies are going to reflect how your post was received, no matter how it was sent.
It works both ways - I replied to a post from an artist really enraged with AI and pointed out it's no different from a human artist seeing art and incorporating it into their style; that radio dealt with this in the US by legislating 'compulsory licenses' so the outcome is unclear.
The response was an immediate perma-ban from mastadon.social... this is not crypto right wing content they are unable to process anything except agreement.
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I kind of get the sense that she just finds the generalized sort of person who's drawn to Mastodon to be insufferable.
Any medium where you invite commentary from strangers on the internet is going to be full of ignorant commentary.
If this is something that stresses you out, probably best to disable comments from anyone you do not follow.
Simple as that.
I do not think this is a problem with the tool.
I do think over-exposure to internet commentary is toxic. Like alcohol, it is a poison that is only fun if you are capable of moderation. Not everyone is, and that is okay.
For me I was addicted to reading comments from viral nonsense I did online. Giving up LTE and carrying always-accessible always-online devices meant I can only access the Internet from fixed locations that I am only willing to spend a limited amount of time in.
The internet does not follow me or summon me with notifications anymore. I visit the internet on my terms.
For me, this made me much happier with my relationship to the internet. YMMV.