Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Discussions about serious topics, for serious people
User avatar
nekomatic
Dorkwood
Posts: 1376
Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 3:04 pm

Re: Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Post by nekomatic » Wed Nov 09, 2022 1:46 pm

dyqik wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 1:19 pm
The fundamental flaw in that line of reasoning is that it assumes that Twitter is the default public place where everyone should want and need to be. Rather than it being a private corporation that got made popular because a bunch of journalists moved there, and which can easily be replaced by multiple other services.
Yeah, that does seem to be the premise. Whether it’s a flaw is debatable though - Twitter is de facto the place to be for anyone with an opinion, isn’t it? The complaint against Mastodon (which I haven’t even tried visiting yet, so purely secondhand) appears to be that it has a culture of content warnings such that people isolate themselves from hearing uncomfortable truths, or something like that.
Move-a… side, and let the mango through… let the mango through

User avatar
dyqik
Princess POW
Posts: 7526
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:19 pm
Location: Masshole
Contact:

Re: Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Post by dyqik » Wed Nov 09, 2022 1:46 pm

bjn wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 1:30 pm
AIUI "White flight" is the idea that white folks are leaving a thing/place because of some number of non-white people being there and their inner racists couldn't be helped. Moving from Twitter to Mastodon seems to be driven by Elon Musk being a c.nt as opposed to too many brown people using it.

What an I missing?
You're not missing anything.

White Flight (e.g. see Kevin Kruse's book of that title) is the flight from inner cities to suburbs by white people when black people started getting rights there, and when school integration was forced.

User avatar
dyqik
Princess POW
Posts: 7526
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:19 pm
Location: Masshole
Contact:

Re: Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Post by dyqik » Wed Nov 09, 2022 1:48 pm

nekomatic wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 1:46 pm
dyqik wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 1:19 pm
The fundamental flaw in that line of reasoning is that it assumes that Twitter is the default public place where everyone should want and need to be. Rather than it being a private corporation that got made popular because a bunch of journalists moved there, and which can easily be replaced by multiple other services.
Yeah, that does seem to be the premise. Whether it’s a flaw is debatable though - Twitter is de facto the place to be for anyone with an opinion, isn’t it? The complaint against Mastodon (which I haven’t even tried visiting yet, so purely secondhand) appears to be that it has a culture of content warnings such that people isolate themselves from hearing uncomfortable truths, or something like that.
Anyone saying that does not understand CWs and how they are used on Mastodon. They aren't used as content warnings per se, but more as headlines or thread titles here or on Reddit.
Last edited by dyqik on Wed Nov 09, 2022 1:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
Woodchopper
Princess POW
Posts: 7057
Joined: Sat Oct 12, 2019 9:05 am

Re: Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Post by Woodchopper » Wed Nov 09, 2022 1:53 pm

dyqik wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 1:46 pm
bjn wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 1:30 pm
AIUI "White flight" is the idea that white folks are leaving a thing/place because of some number of non-white people being there and their inner racists couldn't be helped. Moving from Twitter to Mastodon seems to be driven by Elon Musk being a c.nt as opposed to too many brown people using it.

What an I missing?
You're not missing anything.

White Flight (e.g. see Kevin Kruse's book of that title) is the flight from inner cities to suburbs by white people when black people started getting rights there, and when school integration was forced.
The term appears to be used as an analogy in terms of social media platforms.

User avatar
dyqik
Princess POW
Posts: 7526
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:19 pm
Location: Masshole
Contact:

Re: Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Post by dyqik » Wed Nov 09, 2022 1:55 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 1:53 pm
dyqik wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 1:46 pm
bjn wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 1:30 pm
AIUI "White flight" is the idea that white folks are leaving a thing/place because of some number of non-white people being there and their inner racists couldn't be helped. Moving from Twitter to Mastodon seems to be driven by Elon Musk being a c.nt as opposed to too many brown people using it.

What an I missing?
You're not missing anything.

White Flight (e.g. see Kevin Kruse's book of that title) is the flight from inner cities to suburbs by white people when black people started getting rights there, and when school integration was forced.
The term appears to be used as an analogy in terms of social media platforms.
The term means the exact opposite of what's being asserted here, so the analogy is either extremely ill-informed, or deliberately abusive.

People leaving a platform because of abuse against minorities is not white flight, it's the exact opposite. It's them building a better, less abusive place as an alternative to the abusive platform.

User avatar
Woodchopper
Princess POW
Posts: 7057
Joined: Sat Oct 12, 2019 9:05 am

Re: Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Post by Woodchopper » Wed Nov 09, 2022 2:04 pm

dyqik wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 1:55 pm
Woodchopper wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 1:53 pm
dyqik wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 1:46 pm


You're not missing anything.

White Flight (e.g. see Kevin Kruse's book of that title) is the flight from inner cities to suburbs by white people when black people started getting rights there, and when school integration was forced.
The term appears to be used as an analogy in terms of social media platforms.
The term means the exact opposite of what's being asserted here, so the analogy is either extremely ill-informed, or deliberately abusive.

People leaving a platform because of abuse against minorities is not white flight, it's the exact opposite. It's them building a better, less abusive place as an alternative to the abusive platform.
I suggest that if several obviously intelligent persons of colour describe something as being 'white flight' then the best response of white people is to pause and reflect on what they are saying and why they are saying it, rather than to instantly dismiss those persons of colour as being "extremely ill-informed, or deliberately abusive".

User avatar
dyqik
Princess POW
Posts: 7526
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:19 pm
Location: Masshole
Contact:

Re: Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Post by dyqik » Wed Nov 09, 2022 2:25 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 2:04 pm
dyqik wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 1:55 pm
Woodchopper wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 1:53 pm


The term appears to be used as an analogy in terms of social media platforms.
The term means the exact opposite of what's being asserted here, so the analogy is either extremely ill-informed, or deliberately abusive.

People leaving a platform because of abuse against minorities is not white flight, it's the exact opposite. It's them building a better, less abusive place as an alternative to the abusive platform.
I suggest that if several obviously intelligent persons of colour describe something as being 'white flight' then the best response of white people is to pause and reflect on what they are saying and why they are saying it, rather than to instantly dismiss those persons of colour as being "extremely ill-informed, or deliberately abusive".
I did not instantly dismiss anything here. I may have over egged that particular point.

There is an awful lot of commentary about people leaving Twitter that assumes that Twitter is the only place anyone should want to be, and that Twitter must remain as the main place for online commentary despite rising abuse on the platform. This is counter to attempts to fight online abuse of minorities of all kinds, as it leaves online commentary beholden to one abusive white male billionaire.

Twitter is not an inner city where people are trapped by jobs, housing, financial conditions etc. due to substantial structural racism. People leaving Twitter now are building, refining and advertising the tools to allow anyone to move freely to other services, lowering the barriers to moving to platforms with less abuse. That's the opposite of White Flight, where structural barriers were deliberately put in place to prevent black people moving with the whites leaving inner cities.

User avatar
discovolante
Stummy Beige
Posts: 4084
Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2019 5:10 pm

Re: Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Post by discovolante » Wed Nov 09, 2022 4:19 pm

My initial reaction was similar to yours dyqik, but I think at least one issue is that some people will have spent a very long time building up a 'presence' on twitter, and while Mastodon isn't exactly a case of starting entirely from scratch, it's not as straightforward as just importing all your twitter followers from one platform to another.

That said I have to admit I haven't read all of the articles linked to in the twitter thread (I'm at work innit) and a better reply from me would have been to actually do that and engage with what's already been said, but I haven't this time so sorry.
To defy the laws of tradition is a crusade only of the brave.

User avatar
dyqik
Princess POW
Posts: 7526
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:19 pm
Location: Masshole
Contact:

Re: Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Post by dyqik » Wed Nov 09, 2022 4:20 pm

discovolante wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 4:19 pm
My initial reaction was similar to yours dyqik, but I think at least one issue is that some people will have spent a very long time building up a 'presence' on twitter, and while Mastodon isn't exactly a case of starting entirely from scratch, it's not as straightforward as just importing all your twitter followers from one platform to another.
It isn't that straightforward right now, but as more people do move, it is rapidly becoming easier.

User avatar
bjn
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2915
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:58 pm
Location: London

Re: Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Post by bjn » Wed Nov 09, 2022 4:40 pm

discovolante wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 4:19 pm
My initial reaction was similar to yours dyqik, but I think at least one issue is that some people will have spent a very long time building up a 'presence' on twitter, and while Mastodon isn't exactly a case of starting entirely from scratch, it's not as straightforward as just importing all your twitter followers from one platform to another.
Doesn't that apply to anyone on Twitter with a "presence", irrespective of anything else they may or may not be?

User avatar
discovolante
Stummy Beige
Posts: 4084
Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2019 5:10 pm

Re: Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Post by discovolante » Wed Nov 09, 2022 4:48 pm

bjn wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 4:40 pm
discovolante wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 4:19 pm
My initial reaction was similar to yours dyqik, but I think at least one issue is that some people will have spent a very long time building up a 'presence' on twitter, and while Mastodon isn't exactly a case of starting entirely from scratch, it's not as straightforward as just importing all your twitter followers from one platform to another.
Doesn't that apply to anyone on Twitter with a "presence", irrespective of anything else they may or may not be?
It does, but we're not talking about them.
To defy the laws of tradition is a crusade only of the brave.

User avatar
bjn
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2915
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:58 pm
Location: London

Re: Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Post by bjn » Wed Nov 09, 2022 6:27 pm

You posited that non white people aren’t leaving Twitter for Mastadon because they have followings they don’t want to leave behind. Why are white people willing to abandon their followers (eg Stephen Fry with 5 million who shut his account) but non white people aren’t?

Is it even true that white people are disproportionately abandoning Twitter?

User avatar
Woodchopper
Princess POW
Posts: 7057
Joined: Sat Oct 12, 2019 9:05 am

Re: Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Post by Woodchopper » Wed Nov 09, 2022 8:13 pm

bjn wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 6:27 pm
You posited that non white people aren’t leaving Twitter for Mastadon because they have followings they don’t want to leave behind. Why are white people willing to abandon their followers (eg Stephen Fry with 5 million who shut his account) but non white people aren’t?

Is it even true that white people are disproportionately abandoning Twitter?
As I undertstand it, Fry is an example of the point being made.

Fry is a well off celebrity. He doesn't need a presence on Twitter. It'll probably help him sell a few more books or tickets but his life won't be dramatically worse without it.

Lots of people here work in research, so here's an example. It's hypothetical but based on people I know.

Imagine an junior academic at a university in Nigeria. She is on a short term contract and if her work is going to be read and he career is to develop she needs to build a professional network (standard advice to graduate students). However, there are very few others in her field in Nigeria (very few academics overall compared to developed countries). She can't afford to go to academic conferences, and even if she got sponsorship she is unlikely to get a visa to visit the European or North American country where the conference is likely to be held.

So she uses social media to share information build up a professional network which will help her get the vital citations, invitations to co-author or mentions in grant proposals. As social networks go Twitter is by far the most important. Facebook is full of middle aged people sharing pictures of their kids and Reddit is for cat videos and relationship breakdowns. Twitter is where you'll find academics, and the other people interested in their work such as journalists or employees of NGOs. So far Mastodon doesn't seem to cut it, both in terms of the number of users and how it's designed.

The Nigerian junior academic needs Twitter. When she sees a tenured professor in Oxbridge or the Ivy League stating that they are quitting Twitter because they don't like Elon Musk, she'll perceive that an important part of her professional network has just been closed off. Just like Stephen Fry, leaving Twitter won't have a dramatic effect upon the tenured professor. He'll meet all the top people at the next conference. This is how privilege works.

User avatar
dyqik
Princess POW
Posts: 7526
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:19 pm
Location: Masshole
Contact:

Re: Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Post by dyqik » Wed Nov 09, 2022 8:38 pm

While your point about Fry having the social capital to take a risk by moving completely is accurate, there's quite a few assumptions in the rest of your post that aren't necessarily correct.

Scholar.social has been a popular mastodon instance for at least five years, with a fairly large userbase among academics I know and work with. Right now it's closed to new users due to the sheer number of academics trying to move to it.

Your assertion that Mastodon doesn't "cut it" as an academic social network due to its design while Twitter is well designed for academic networking needs a rather substantial citation.

The move of serious people, including academics, to Mastodon is happening very rapidly. There's also a lot of cross-posting, and mirroring of Twitter to Mastodon.

Also, it's not that hard to keep up with both Twitter and Mastodon at the same time. It's not an "either/or" proposition right now.

Academics probably aren't the best example to look at here.

User avatar
bjn
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2915
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:58 pm
Location: London

Re: Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Post by bjn » Wed Nov 09, 2022 9:11 pm

Does that example not also apply to poor white academics?

User avatar
discovolante
Stummy Beige
Posts: 4084
Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2019 5:10 pm

Re: Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Post by discovolante » Wed Nov 09, 2022 9:15 pm

bjn wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 9:11 pm
Does that example not also apply to poor white academics?
It can do. I think a risk of focusing on individual marginalised groups is that it can (but doesn't have to) lead to people fighting over the same resources rather than collective understanding and support, but on the other hand I can entirely understand why it happens when other people are often so incredibly keen to deflect attention away from them completely.
To defy the laws of tradition is a crusade only of the brave.

User avatar
Stephanie
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2896
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:38 pm
Location: clinging tenaciously to your buttocks

Re: Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Post by Stephanie » Wed Nov 09, 2022 9:37 pm

There's a couple of things here. The article is talking specifically about blue ticks, rather than the rest of us. Blue ticks have tended to have more protection than other accounts on Twitter, and are less likely to be suspended due to mass reporting.

When I joined Mastodon in 2018, this was at a point where a significant number of lgbtq and sex workers were losing their accounts, both on Twitter and on Tumblr. The reason the fedi appealed, is because people had the freedom to set up their own instances, with rules that suited them, and where they were less likely to lose their account because a bunch of people reported them and automatic moderation kicked them off. Or because there was a visible nipple. There was also a second wave from India in 2019, when several left wing accounts were suspended, which they believed was because they criticised the government there.

So I think in talking about Mastodon, it's important to understand that history too.
"I got a flu virus named after me 'cause I kissed a bat on a dare."

User avatar
bjn
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2915
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:58 pm
Location: London

Re: Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Post by bjn » Wed Nov 09, 2022 9:38 pm

So the problem as outlined above is for marginalised groups of all stripes then, not specifically a racial one.

How well will Twitter work for them if It descends into 8chan levels of edge lordery as Musk appears to want to let happen?

User avatar
Woodchopper
Princess POW
Posts: 7057
Joined: Sat Oct 12, 2019 9:05 am

Re: Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Post by Woodchopper » Wed Nov 09, 2022 10:15 pm

dyqik wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 8:38 pm
While your point about Fry having the social capital to take a risk by moving completely is accurate,
Yes, that sums it up. People with lots of social capital can easily quit a social network. That social capital usually comes from a prestigious job. People whose social capital is based upon a social media network rather than their prestigious job will have a very different view about quitting.
dyqik wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 8:38 pm
there's quite a few assumptions in the rest of your post that aren't necessarily correct.

Scholar.social has been a popular mastodon instance for at least five years, with a fairly large userbase among academics I know and work with. Right now it's closed to new users due to the sheer number of academics trying to move to it.

Your assertion that Mastodon doesn't "cut it" as an academic social network due to its design while Twitter is well designed for academic networking needs a rather substantial citation.
Just a personal opinion based upon my experience over the past few days. I can't join scholar.social. Been trying to locate relevant academic discussions via the search. But I've found nothing at all. Which I'm assuming is due to the lack of a keyword search. As explained to us earlier, that is apparently a deliberate decision to protect users by making it difficult to find people who are discussing certain subjects. I'm fine with that and people should be protected, but then it also means that Mastodon isn't as useful as Twitter as a means of finding who is working on certain subjects.

I'd be delighted to be shown to be wrong. IMHO Twitter is deliberately engineered to be a dystopian theater of cruelty and I'd be very happy to see it and its narcissistic a..eh.le of an owner end up bankrupt.

User avatar
discovolante
Stummy Beige
Posts: 4084
Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2019 5:10 pm

Re: Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Post by discovolante » Wed Nov 09, 2022 10:41 pm

dyqik wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 2:25 pm
Woodchopper wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 2:04 pm
dyqik wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 1:55 pm


The term means the exact opposite of what's being asserted here, so the analogy is either extremely ill-informed, or deliberately abusive.

People leaving a platform because of abuse against minorities is not white flight, it's the exact opposite. It's them building a better, less abusive place as an alternative to the abusive platform.
I suggest that if several obviously intelligent persons of colour describe something as being 'white flight' then the best response of white people is to pause and reflect on what they are saying and why they are saying it, rather than to instantly dismiss those persons of colour as being "extremely ill-informed, or deliberately abusive".
I did not instantly dismiss anything here. I may have over egged that particular point.

There is an awful lot of commentary about people leaving Twitter that assumes that Twitter is the only place anyone should want to be, and that Twitter must remain as the main place for online commentary despite rising abuse on the platform. This is counter to attempts to fight online abuse of minorities of all kinds, as it leaves online commentary beholden to one abusive white male billionaire.

Twitter is not an inner city where people are trapped by jobs, housing, financial conditions etc. due to substantial structural racism. People leaving Twitter now are building, refining and advertising the tools to allow anyone to move freely to other services, lowering the barriers to moving to platforms with less abuse. That's the opposite of White Flight, where structural barriers were deliberately put in place to prevent black people moving with the whites leaving inner cities.
Your last para I think connects two of the points being made: it's (relatively) easy for well known white, privileged blue-tickers to head somewhere else and take their following with them, and they are doing it now because all of a sudden they feel threatened without really being aware of the experience a lot of people have had on twitter for years.

And I guess the point about LGBTQ people and sex workers moving to Mastodon a few years ago also partly illustrates the point that it's not always appropriate to lump everyone in as a 'marginalised group', because different people are affected in different ways (obviously there is overlap between groups as well).

That said though I don't, very broadly speaking, really see the benefit in railing against the mass behaviour of large groups of people, where that behaviour doesn't seem to have been caused by deliberate manipulation - if it's gonna happen it's gonna happen, although I think trying to understand why it happens is worthwhile.

And I'm not suddenly anti moving to Mastodon or anything like that at all, it's just, ooh there's a fair bit to think about.
To defy the laws of tradition is a crusade only of the brave.

User avatar
jdc
Hilda Ogden
Posts: 1925
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:31 pm
Location: Your Mum

Re: Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Post by jdc » Wed Nov 09, 2022 11:23 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Tue Nov 08, 2022 5:20 pm
So how do I find shitposts on Mastodon?

I tried #shitposts and just got one toot.
Try #jdc

User avatar
bjn
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2915
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:58 pm
Location: London

Re: Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Post by bjn » Wed Nov 09, 2022 11:38 pm

jdc wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 11:23 pm
Woodchopper wrote:
Tue Nov 08, 2022 5:20 pm
So how do I find shitposts on Mastodon?

I tried #shitposts and just got one toot.
Try #jdc
Which is “Journal du Coin”, a french bitcoin site. You’ve been a crypto shill all along!

Millennie Al
After Pie
Posts: 1621
Joined: Mon Mar 16, 2020 4:02 am

Re: Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Post by Millennie Al » Thu Nov 10, 2022 4:03 am

Woodchopper wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 8:13 pm
Fry is a well off celebrity. He doesn't need a presence on Twitter. It'll probably help him sell a few more books or tickets but his life won't be dramatically worse without it.
The presence of people like him on Twitter adds great value to Twitter. Anyone who says he should stay because the platform is racist or otherwise toxic is saying that racism/toxicity/whatever should be supported. The one thing that could force Twitter to reform in a particular way is people leaving due to lack of that reform.

User avatar
Bird on a Fire
Princess POW
Posts: 10137
Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2019 5:05 pm
Location: Portugal

Re: Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Post by Bird on a Fire » Thu Nov 10, 2022 12:21 pm

Personally I think taking public communications out of the hands of corporations and billionaires and decentralising it is a very valuable future-proofing move for social media.
We have the right to a clean, healthy, sustainable environment.

User avatar
bjn
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2915
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:58 pm
Location: London

Re: Mastodon (not heavy metal)

Post by bjn » Thu Nov 10, 2022 1:08 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Thu Nov 10, 2022 12:21 pm
Personally I think taking public communications out of the hands of corporations and billionaires and decentralising it is a very valuable future-proofing move for social media.
^^^^ This.

Post Reply