Question for those who DO think that the focus of Mastodon and everyone making Fediverse projects SHOULD be focusing on GROWTH: why?
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Dieureplied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
@mekkaokereke @james isn't the situation rather that many people prefer to stay on the ship because the lifeboats aren't comfortable enough and they'd have to pick one?
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mekka okereke :verified:replied to Dieu last edited by
No.
The situation is that people on Mastodon haven't made it safe or welcoming for newcomers, and many of them actively get in the way of people like me that do try to make it safer and more welcoming for newcomers.
Because a lot of people on Mastodon like being the HOA, and because they can't see the similarities between "Keep Portland weird!" and "England for English!" and "Close our borders! Build the Wall!" And "Mastodon has a certain culture! Don't try to change it!"
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Dieureplied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
@mekkaokereke @james ok, I see. Hasn't this gotten any better at all since the start of the great migration? I think I'm seeing a lot less posts explaining The True Essence of Mastodon (It's Not Just Mastodon But the Fediverse Btw) than back then, but I also am far less exposed.
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mekka okereke :verified:replied to Dieu last edited by
But how would it have gotten better? Things don't just organically get better. Individuals need to do things, and those things make it better.
Who would be the individuals that made it better? What did they do to make it better? What would be the evidence that it got better?
Are there more Black folk? About 1 in 5 Mastodon users should be Black. We're... a little short of that.
BlueSky crossed 10 million with the Brazilian user influx. How many million users came to Mastodon?
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@james You've gotten a few answers by now that more or less match my thinking, but I'll give it a go anyway, helps me refocus my thoughts on this question too.
Social media has become very popular over the past two decades, so much so that the companies that own it have gained outsized power over popular communication, which is a problem worth solving. I believe communication infrastructure should be governed by the communities using it, not by American tech companies and ad firms.
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Julian Fietkaureplied to Julian Fietkau last edited by
@james Sites like reddit or Discord are structured for community self-organizing with some limitations, but still have corporate overlords who will claim ownership of our communication and impose their rules.
The fediverse, or something conceptually evolved from it, can actually take us to the point where communities can own their infrastructure and establish their own rules and rule enforcement. Broadly speaking, this is the right direction.
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Julian Fietkaureplied to Julian Fietkau last edited by
@james Ideally, anyone who is looking to join (or start) a community space for people to talk among themselves and with others, should be able to do so on the fediverse, and find the people they want to talk to, and talk to them safely.
For that to become universally true, the fediverse needs to grow quite a lot. Technically, culturally, and in numbers. I hope we'll live to see the day.
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Julian Fietkaureplied to Julian Fietkau last edited by
@james (I also have selfish reasons why I want the fedi to grow: I want to talk to cool people and get official government information and follow some celebs I enjoy without having to log into ad-ridden surveillance platforms. But that's more about what I want than what the fediverse "should" be or do, so it's not really part of the answer to you question.)
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@james I don’t believe this place is in the space to grow effectively and too many terrible subcultures. But, if the tooling improved, I want growth as I want people especially those in vulnerable communities to understand what it’s like to have more control and an attempt at an ethical social network experience. An attempt to create more community led systems. This space can also use more diversity like really badly. Black, Brown, LBGTQ+ folks are culture drivers and we need that here and not on Big Social