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Wed, 02 Nov 2022 09:09:09 -0700 from mastodon

There's an Atlantic article in part about our research about online platform migration, including what it means for the #TwitterMigration (and also mentions #AcademicTwitter). Here's a paragraph about the potential challenge for #Mastodon - I'd be curious if folks agree with this. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/11/people-say-theyre-leaving-twitter-are-they-really/671967/

At the moment, Mastodon is not really a compelling alternative to Twitter—in part because it’s hard to instantly set up. If you navigate to the site and click the “Create Account” button today, you’ll be greeted by a pop-up: “Creating an
account on mastodon.social is currently not possible, but please keep in mind that you do not need an account specifically on mastodon.social to use Mastodon … Since Mastodon is decentralized, you can create an account on another server and still
interact with this one.” The platform’s federated structure—a collection of servers that can communicate but have no central hub—means that there is a significant learning curve for new users, and that it will never serve the same broadcasting
function as a site known to drive national discourse. It is better for communities that want to talk among themselves, which could also be said of alternatives such as Discord and Reddit. (Fiesler noted that “Academic Twitter” could possibly make the
move to Mastodon, as could smaller subcultures that want to use something that looks and feels like Twitter.)

Hank G ☑️

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 09:12:24 -0700 from friendica

@Dr. Casey Fiesler Server selection is a necessary evil of the fediverse. The problem can be minimized in the short term by going to join<whichever service> instead of the main site. But the bigtech walled gardens have trained us well that the whole system is one enormous site so that's what users expect now.

Dr. Casey Fiesler

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 09:13:43 -0700 from mastodon

@Hank G ☑️ Yep you're absolutely right. This is why it's a barrier to the general public. I tried to explain Mastodon on TikTok and got a lot of "so it's like reddit?" and "so it's like discord?" and "I tried to sign up but don't know how."

David Carroll

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 09:23:53 -0700 from mastodon

@Hank G ☑️ @Dr. Casey Fiesler Very much agree. Once more valuable communities are established and some medium sized instances gain new members migrating from birdsite, it will take the load off the big instance and start to help show folks that once they slow down, consider our conditioning, make some time to prune a followership, the re-decentralization into a network of networks isn’t exactly the dead-end as portrayed. Improved portability support across instances could also reduce barriers to entry.

Joe Cardillo

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 09:35:00 -0700 from mastodon

@David Carroll @Hank G ☑️ @Dr. Casey Fiesler I think that makes a lot of sense — the sign up process here is a bit clunky but that's fixable, however the one thing I've noticed is there's a pretty big gap right now re: onboarding

How does each server get new users to those 2, 3, 4, 5 touch points where someone ends up interested / engaged (aka DAUs)...

...from a design perspective, it's flexible enough to where users are doing that work, but it may not be enough for wide adoption.

David Carroll

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 09:43:29 -0700 from mastodon

@Joe Cardillo @Hank G ☑️ @Dr. Casey Fiesler It strikes me that the usernames that get populated in this field in the instance administrator configuration seem to be an important curatorial task in building things out.

§ Jason :mastodon:

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 09:15:59 -0700 from mastodon

The article seemed to imply this is “liberal” bluster.

For myself, I left Facebook in 2017 after having been on the service for over 10 years. I’ve never gone back and never regretted my decision.

I haven’t decided whether I will completely delete my 15 year old Twitter account or not, but I will likely shutter it and point people to Mastodon.

@Dr. Casey Fiesler

Hank G ☑️

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 09:22:18 -0700 from friendica

@Jason Cranford Teague @Dr. Casey Fiesler Yeah I was part of the post-Cambridge Analytica wave that arrived here. I sadly wasn't able to stay off of Facebook or Twitter but this became my primary space. I do get the feeling that the MSM covered the right wing exodus to their alternative platforms with more positive spin than what they are giving here. I admit to being biased on this matter though.

Dr. Casey Fiesler

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 09:28:02 -0700 from mastodon

@Jason Cranford Teague The article title is very bad. It's a bad way of framing the issue IMO though they represented our research appropriately, if maybe drawing a weird conclusion from it in the last paragraph.

Dadá Dan

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 09:17:54 -0700 from mastodon

@Dr. Casey Fiesler I agree with the general sense but ai have academic pet peeves with it. The main is that, imo, the reason to move to a network is not how easy it is to use, nor how frictionless is, but who is bringing me there. I originally joined Mastodon to keep following @Sasha Costanza-Chock some months ago. Without that, if push comes to shovel I would have probably chosen discord communities since I am already in some there.
But I have to admit that NOTHING makes me download MS Teams.

Hank G ☑️

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 09:23:41 -0700 from friendica

@Sasha Costanza-Chock @Dr. Casey Fiesler @Dadá Dan That was the last part of the article too. The lack of network effect. Part of that is also by design here. Without the algorithmic boosting juicing the engagement/dopamine cycle and no means of direct monetization or inorganic content boosting it makes it harder for that to take root and produce that sort of virality. If it crosses a sufficient tipping point though it is enough for people to stick around.

Anthony Dardis

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 09:24:02 -0700 from mastodon

@Dr. Casey Fiesler Yes. It turns out not to be a problem, but you won't know that until you start using it. And that kind of bump is more than enough to keep people away.

I wonder also whether the Bold Face Names in the National Discourse (and we) expect there to be a unified platform that makes the Discourse easy. That's what TV did in the past, and what the newspapers did in the past.

I wonder also if the disunity of the current Discourse flows from the *appearance* that you're getting that unity.

TrustTrist

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 09:25:16 -0700 from mastodon

@Dr. Casey Fiesler I agree, it’s not as straightforward as Twitter is. And even once you get it, you still have to decide what’s best for your own use case. I mean focusing only on one instance or many. One could argue that sharing one thing on an instance would not be relevant on another one. Soooo, I have a lot of thinking ahead lol

Jason Colditz

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 09:27:29 -0700 from mastodon

@Dr. Casey Fiesler Anything nice that's worth having is worth working for. Twitter - by design - has made it easy to be complacent and scroll endlessly without much effort (like a slot machine with free spins). Mastodon is probably similar in some respects, but you have to pay into the slot machine to get it rolling. It's comforting to know that all the Twitter expats on Mastodon overcame the sign-up hurdles... speaks to their commitment and values. Though the cost does feel a bit high for non-techies.

yuvipanda

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 09:36:04 -0700 from mastodon

@Dr. Casey Fiesler @abhi.... :t_blink: :julia: it feels like they are missing the point of federation, because there isn’t really a lot of prior mainstream art here. Being on a different server does not restrict your ability to participate with folks in other servers, so mastodon social being down doesn’t matter so much. However this is definitely more complex than a centralized setup!

Dr. Casey Fiesler

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 09:36:44 -0700 from mastodon

@yuvipanda @abhi.... :t_blink: :julia: I really think it's just hard for people to wrap their heads around. I tried to explain it simplistically on tiktok and go responses like "so it's like reddit?"

Hank G ☑️

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 09:38:00 -0700 from friendica

@Dr. Casey Fiesler @abhi.... :t_blink: :julia: @yuvipanda The analogy most platforms go to with respect to the federated nature etc. is email, or at least the way email used to work. Do you find that helps any or does that lead them down the path asking if it is email?

yuvipanda

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 09:39:16 -0700 from mastodon

@Dr. Casey Fiesler @abhi.... :t_blink: :julia: might take a few years. I wonder how this was when twitter itself was starting. What the analogy was.

Hank G ☑️

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 09:40:16 -0700 from friendica

@Dr. Casey Fiesler @abhi.... :t_blink: :julia: @yuvipanda "It's like MySpace but with only 140 characters" or "It's like sending a text message to the whole internet"?

Jeff Palmer

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 09:42:16 -0700 from mastodon

@Dr. Casey Fiesler Regardless of the on-boarding issues (of which there are many), my main concern with this conversation is the assumption that a "broadcasting function known to drive national discourse" is really a good thing. I see a system that amplifies performative politics from those that would not otherwise have a broad reach. The algorithm removes any user-based critical assessment during the amplification of messages, whereas the fediverse relies on it.

Dr. Casey Fiesler

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 09:47:27 -0700 from mastodon

@Jeff Palmer I think people use social media in different ways and get different things out of it. Some people will see the differences between Twitter and Mastodon to be a negative, and some a positive.

Esteban :linux: :rstats:

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 09:44:37 -0700 from mastodon

@Dr. Casey Fiesler I believe people outside academia, and outside the world of fields related to computer science will have a difficult time moving to #Mastodon. It requires some learning, and probably we are privileged because we can find the time to learn. But, many people don't have the chance to sit and learn. My non-academic friends didn't follow me to #Mastodon. They argued that the lack of time to learn something new and start from zero are the main reasons to stay in traditional social networks.

Kristine K.

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 10:04:48 -0700 from mastodon

@Dr. Casey Fiesler The article is wrong in implying that Mastodon is more like Reddit than Twitter, when you actually have both on here. Your "home" show posts from people you follow, the "Local" is just your instance/server (Reddit-like), and the "Federated" is the big firehose of all the servers, which not even Twitter does since your timeline is only the people you follow (have to use hashtags to find new people, which was fine). There's a learning curve, but there was with Twitter and Reddit too.

Amy Zhang

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 10:11:47 -0700 from mastodon

@Dr. Casey Fiesler I guess I don't think this is true since you absolutely could use it as a broadcasting function by amassing a huge number of followers across servers. Also, within a server, it's not much different from a platform - technically Twitter itself could even become a mastodon server if it wanted to open up federation.

Amy Zhang

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 10:18:37 -0700 from mastodon

that's more a discussion of one day vs today though. today it feels a little more like Reddit/Discord, and server choice feels really consequential. But as people gain followers and certain servers take off or a big company decides to put a lot of money into developing their own fork, the architecture is such that it will grow to feel more like the social dynamics of email (IMO).

Dr. Casey Fiesler

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 10:49:33 -0700 from mastodon

@Amy Zhang Yep I think you're absolutely right. I mean I think Mastodon is *better* for the "I want to mostly talk to a smaller community" use case than Twitter, but it all depends on how someone wants to use it.

Dr. Robert M Flight

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 10:28:57 -0700 from mastodon

@Dr. Casey Fiesler The whole not being able to sign up at mastodon.social, yes, I agree thats going to throw people off.

However, I disagree about needing a central hub. So many people follow so many from other servers, that I think posts flow across many servers basically unimpeded.

No central server means theoretically the service can never die, and no one company can never control *everything*. Thats a plus in my book.

Stephanie King

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 11:03:04 -0700 from mastodon

@Dr. Casey Fiesler I do think it's really hard to understand how to pick an instance and the significance of how that becomes your home "neighborhood." Then it's difficult to find people (even who WANT to be found) so I think a lot ppl sign up, get a handful of followers, think it's too "quiet," and then feel like it didn't work. It wasn't until I connected with a couple dozen ppl -- new and old -- that I started to feel like my feed was anything.

mathew

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 11:09:41 -0700 from mastodon

@Dr. Casey Fiesler well personally I didn't find mastodon hard to learn, but possibly I'm not representative. No question that the unitary nature of Twitter will maintain its dominance in mainstream politics & culture, and that the true competitors are places like discourse, discord, subreddits, etc.

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 12:17:34 -0700

Let me interject for a moment because I have something to add to this conversation. I've created a number of fediverse platforms and services over the years. Some which you may have heard of,  and many you haven't. First this "uniform space" concept. In my universe on the outskirts of the fediverse we've had cross-instance single sign-on literally for years (since 2010). If you click a link to another site in our family tree, you're "magically" authenticated and the site can let you follow people and interact on it and view stuff on that site which was shared to you personally. It truly is one unified space made up of lots of instances. If you visit a remote profile in our universe you click it and you're connected. You can post on their "wall" and comment - if they allow it. If they've got private photos visible only to "Bob" and you're "bob", you can see the photos on your site and their site. If you're not Bob, you can't.

The next killer app is "nomadic identity". We've had this in some form since 2012. We let you clone your identity on multiple instances which are kept in sync as you change your settings, interact with other and add friends. All your content and media and files are included. So moving from site to site is easy peasy. You clone yourself onto a new site and you can either keep the old one as  backup or drop it.

I won't say that our early efforts were easy to use - they were quite complex and geeky and we used different protocols because the "web standard" protocols weren't up to scratch for doing this stuff.  So we were shunned and ignored by the rest of the fediverse. The software I'm building now is dead simple, but the standard protocols still need some work. We're getting there. Now I work almost completely alone and only a few dozen people use my software. It doesn't have a name or  brand. You won't even find it in the fediverse trackers because we're opposed to fediverse trackers and the whole popularity contest they create. You'll only hear this stuff mentioned in passing and nobody is really interested in trying it out. So I'm not here to push my software. I gave up on that long ago.

I'm here to push my ideas. All of this is possible and we've been doing it and improving it for over a decade now. If this is the fediverse you want, make it happen. I did. Don't let anything or anybody stop you. Especially some talking head that says it cant be done or "it's too hard". We're sending messages around the world instantly using engineered sand fercrysakes.

Sorry for not keeping this to 140 or 280 characters. I don't believe in artificial limitations.

Sheril Kirshenbaum

Thu, 03 Nov 2022 15:02:05 -0700 last edited: Thu, 03 Nov 2022 15:12:44 -0700 from mastodon

@Dr. Casey Fiesler

“But Mastodon isn’t Twitter. You can’t create the same kind of community.”

Ummm yeah. That’s the point! ☺️
#TwitterMigration #Mastodon

From where I sit, #ScienceMastodon seems to be thriving. Meeting interesting new folks on & off the #fediscience server.