❤️ Publishers on social media are between a rock and a hard place Notes
Like: Publishers on social media are between a rock and a hard place
Pretty good overview of the current social media landscape, especially with how it relates to journalism.
Rambles that are fluffy, by fluffy
Like: Publishers on social media are between a rock and a hard place
Pretty good overview of the current social media landscape, especially with how it relates to journalism.
Quoted: This moment isn’t about decentralization
The core need being expressed by millions of users isn’t “get me a decentralized protocol that nobody owns where I can have my choice of algorithms and apps”. It’s “get me a platform that works consistently, with less abuse”. Sometimes it’s also appended with, “where I can build a following for me / my brand / my employer and measure my progress.”
[…]
Many of us have been wanting decentralized social networking for a long time — I’ve been a part of these conversations for around twenty years. It’s tempting to feel like people finally get it. But that’s a trap and a mistake. As always, quite rightly, most people want something that works for them.
Reminder that Usenet has been around since the 80s and was a toxic hellhole even then. Decentralization isn’t the answer to social media problems, it’s just an implementation detail.
Or, as I keep on saying: The problem with Twitter isn’t that it’s centralized, but that it’s Twitter.
In the aftermath of the issues with the major social media platforms, there have been a number of initiatives to reclaim social networking in a way that makes sense for people, with safety and personal control being at the forefront of a lot of peoples' minds.
However, many of these initiatives which have often showed up out of the blue have a bunch of red flags, and somehow people aren’t noticing them when they decide to commit wholeheartedly to a new platform. I think it’s worth sharing some of those warning signs, as someone who’s been around the block a few times.
Today was my last day using Twitter, unless something changes entirely. I have done the following, and suggest others do the same:
Bookmarked: Why is Queer Discourse so Toxic?
A conversation of sorts about how modern social media helps to amplify some of the worst aspects of toxic discourse. Possibly educational for straight allies, too.
My second experiment with trying out Nextdoor has come to an end, after I gave it an even fairer shot than last time.
I won’t go into the details of what happened because I really don’t want to even think about it, but here’s my “suggestions for improving the site” on my deactivation form:
This place sucks and every time I try it again, it turns out to be irredeemable. Any technical fix I can think of is minor compared to the deep-seated social issues which come about from everything about both the site structure and the moderation model, and it doesn’t help that once you become the focus of toxicity there is no way to escape it.
At the very least, hiding notifications about a post should also hide notifications about people replying to your comments on that post or the like.
All I was doing was letting folks know that a racist word is racist, and I’ve had an unending barrage of people spewing hatred and ire at me for it. I muted the worst offenders but there’s just so, so many.
This feeds into my greater disdain for modern social networking, and every time something like this happens (as well as an ongoing situation on Mastodon that is, again, something I don’t want to really get into right now) all I can say is: I miss blogs, and if you want to follow me, the best way is with a feed reader.
This tweet has been making the rounds in IndieWeb spaces, and reflects a thing I’ve been thinking about on and off lately for obvious reasons:
I was building a decentralized, WebMention-based social network (way before Mastodon/ActivityPub), and if anyone had cared back then, it would be a nazi darling today and that just sucks. https://t.co/jXaZTsUNz8
— Hendrik Mans (@hmans) January 12, 2021
I’ve seen several other related sentiments lately; with a certain prominent politician being deplatformed from all of the mainstream social media platforms, and all of the platforms that accept him being in turn shut down or otherwise made ineffective, people have been (quite reasonably!) wondering what happens if he ends up starting up his own IndieWeb site, and causes a resurgence in self-hosted or otherwise privately-run, single-author blogs.