Carey Lening :blobcatverified:

2023-06-28 11:04:36

Thanks for the response, and your thoughts. I will admit, I don't agree with a lot of it, but I do get where you're coming from. I think there's some degree of fractal complexity in these systems that many miss (I wrote about the problem of fractal complexity here: https://careylening.substack.com/p/test-post-thing).

Some disclosures: I (briefly) worked for Meta in 2018-2019, when they were trying to rehabilitate themselves post CA/pre-GDPR. I naively thought I could change some of the particularly odious bad behaviors and practices, and it only took me a few months to realize that this was about as effective as me trying to sprout wings and fly.

Part of the reason is that Meta isn't a monolith anymore; it's a messy, fragmented clown car of a system, a pile-on of various hacks, experiments, deprecated-but-not-yet-deprecated code, forgotten interconnections, and abandoned promo endeavors and efforts. Nobody at Meta knows what data Meta has (and I mean this very literally - they literally cannot comply with a DSAR effectively because they have _no_ clue about what their code is actually tracking, or at least that was the case in 2019).

It's the equivalent of assuming there's a single world order who controls the "System". This shit is so big that while there might be people who know more, nobody (or no single team) knows everything, or even most things. Assuming that conscious efforts to destroy the AP/Fedi are being made by some shadowy leadership group is ascribing WAY too much intelligence and foresight to a group of people who probably thought it would just be cool if they could get on this AP/fedi bandwagon and siphon away Twitter users.

And like, really, I think that's what the main end-goal is. To siphon away Twitter users by showing that Threads will be more like the social network people had on Twitter, back when everyone was on Twitter. FB knows it can't achieve that on its own, so they're going to coopt whatever system might give them an edge.

You hinted at this in a later comment, and I think it's the most realistic basis for any of the P92 efforts. Or, even more cynically: A few people at Meta thought they could get a promo from this.

On Fractal Complexity

Reactive legislation is never a good solution.

^{Carey Lening (Chronicles of the Constantly Curious)}

Carey Lening :blobcatverified:

2023-06-28 15:24:04

1. My previous default network was Twitter, and my followers were all over the map -- likely due to being there for over a decade and me having a weird group of friends across a lot of different points in my life.

There is less diversity (at least based on my followers). It skews far more techie, queer, and male. That said, I don't know if I would characterize Mastodon as niche currently - but as I said "I suspect that Masto ... _will_ be a very small group of folks who share a very specific worldview" -- at least if defederation is widely adopted and downstream defederation occurs. If we go to a more moderate approach, the results may vary.

Separately, there's also evidence that active users on Mastodon (and servers) are going down organically. See: https://api.joinmastodon.org/statistics and that may exacerbate the problem.

Some people, are of course, totally fine with that, and I suspect the people who are fine with that will stick around regardless, even if a splintered version of Masto exists. But I think it's hard to argue that if a schism occurs, it _wouldnt_ lead to a more niche Mastodon experience.

2. I think there are too many closed universes already (closed groups, tribes and subcultures, diametrically opposed political factions, etc. I _personally_ don't find those to be interesting or enriching. It's been my experience over the last three decades online that the more insular or hyper-specialized a group, the more It leads to echo-chambers, and sadly, extremist positions.

I _personally_ like a lot of different things, and read and listen to a lot of varied voices (and I'm forcing myself to broaden that even more since I've started writing in earnest). I try to desperately avoid absolutist positions (though I acknowledge that sometimes I fail). I try to think about systemic failures and cross-interest observations of problems. That is, IMHO, only really possible if you expose yourself to a lot of different, and sometimes disagreeable perspectives.

That isn't to say that I hang out with (or advocate condoning) nazis or fash, or TERFs, or am some sort of freezepeeches absolutist. I'm not. But I get that problems rarely have a single explanation, and when you realize that, you gain a little empathy and perspective on why black/white approaches tend to be more harm than good. Or in my case, why I can see Facebook as evil and still hold the view that the company != every user.