Reading the latest Michael “mookie” Terraciano blog post on the migration to BS is almost painful

This
https://sociale.network/@oblomov/109631715578028585
is a thread I wrote at the beginning of 2023, a couple of months after the peak of the first #TwitterMigration. At the time, he was among the wave of artists that gave that clusterfuck of Hive a chance, preferring it to Mastodon for the usual arguments of questionable validity (I'll get back to this later).

Still, you can see what I'm talking about when I mention the awareness also in the blog posts he wrote at the time, which I mention here https://sociale.network/@oblomov/109639149479790605

Why do I say that the arguments are of questionable validity? Because when you read his most recent blog post about the migration to #BlueSky, you can see that most of those same points that were showstoppers for a migration to #Mastodon or the #Fediverse in general are now taken in stride, when not straight weighted as a positive.

It's almost uncanny how the same characteristics are labelled by the same person as insurmountable obstacles in reference to a platform, and as a refreshing breath of clean air in reference to another.

The sad truth is that the assessments of the importance of these characteristics is not an objective evaluation, but more often than not is just part of the rationalization of a decision that has already been taken based on completely unrelated, be them conscious or unconscious, reasons.

This is a surprisingly difficult argument to make on the #Fediverse, in large part because many people, even among those that prefer it to the commercial silos, have a tendency to read «that's not the reason why people don't come here» as «that's not an issue» and then proceed to fight that strawman, completely oblivious to the fact that something being an issue does but necessarily mean that it's the actual reason for not joining the Fediverse, even when brought forth as motivation.

An argument could be made that if someone makes a claim about their reason for not joining the #Fediverse, or should be trusted: after all, who knows their reasons better than the person making the choice?

The thing is, this argument falls flat on its face pretty quickly. Even when people aren't flat out lying about their reasons, what they come up with to justify their choice to themselves often turns out to be inconsistent at best. Mookiebean's position is just one example of this.

During the first #TwitterMigration, there was a hammering campaign around the absence of “quote boosts” as the critical reason. This, despite the fact that 1. QB is barely more than a fancy UI over “linking to a post from another post” 2. as such, it could already be done for the purported purposes that those advocating for it claimed to need it for 3. actual QB are available on #Fediverse platforms other than #Mastodon.

Each and every time any of this was pointed out, it turned out that despite the original claims, QB was not, in fact, the reason for not joining the #Fediverse, but an excuse for hiding a much simpler fact: the Fediverse ethos and mechanisms are anti-viral, and this drives away clout chasers, people that have built their entire “social” persona on gaming the silo algorithms to garner attention.

I'm not the only one who noticed that, see for example @_elena's post here https://mastodon.social/@_elena/113332435360449024
Even better, go to the OP here
https://mastodon.social/@mhoye/113332019246104828
and browse the whole thread —it's an excellent example of what I'm discussing here.

Again, before anyone jumps in my mentions shouting «but the #Fediverse has real issues!!!111» —nobody is denying that. That's not really the point. The question is: are those issues really the main reason why people don't come here? And the answer is, by and large, no. For the most part, the main reason why people don't join the Fediverse is:

people go where people are

It's really as simple as that.

And here's the thing: people are where trendsetters are. And trendsetter are such because of clout. No clout, no trendsetting, no trendsetting, no people.

Does that mean that the Fediverse doesn't have issues that need solving to make it easier for people to join and have a good experience here?

No, but it does mean that even when those features will be available (and in fact, they often already are, just not in Mastodon) people will still not join en masse.

@oblomov the reason people are on bluesky and not on fedi is because most people would rather bury their heads in the sand and pretend there isn't an ongoing ever worsening problem. Which means when the problem finally gets huge enough to acknowledge there's a crisis that must be resolved imminently

So where do they go? The place that involves the least friction for relocating. And that's bluesky, not fedi, because bluesky is more like the thing they already know

So yes, for the most part the reason why people aren't on the Fediverse is that the Fediverse is essentially anti-viral (and that, despite many changes in the last couple of years made on Mastodon to take inspiration from the worst virality features of commercial silos).

And honestly, I'd be happier if we don't try “fix” that.

@oblomov The catch is, clout-chasers often have plenty of clout, so if they decide to poop on Fediverse, they might be in a position to convince a lot of other people that Fediverse is all pooped upon.

A slightly different way of looking at it though is that the reason people who are looking for a Twitter alternative are on Bluesky instead of fedi is that Bluesky's made a lot more progress than Mastodon on addressing the problems people who checked out fedi in 2022 (or 2017) encountered.

Sure there's a lot more to social networking than a Twitter alternative, and there's a lot more to fedi than Mastodon, but press coverage of fedi focuses on Mastodon and Threads as Twitter alternatives. So even people who want something more don't know to look for it in fedi. And Mastodon in particular doesn't make it easy for people who are looking for something other than mastodon.social (the default signup) and the mediocre Twitter-like mobile apps.


@[email protected] @[email protected]

@[email protected] It's interesting going back and reading https://privacy.thenexus.today/black-twitter-quoting-and-white-toxicity-on-mastodon/ (which has those quotes and others).

As @[email protected] and @[email protected] (and others) said at the time, it wasn't the lack of quote boosts per se that was an issue for most people. It was the discourse around quote boosts -- the racist false claim that they "inherently lead to toxcity", and the double standard that a key component of Black digital practices shouldn't be supported because it could be used for harassment even though other harassment vectors are supported and there hasn't really been an effort to address the problems.

@jdp23 there were definitely multiple layers to the discussion. In my timelines, both here and on Twitter, the vast majority of posts I came across on the topic at the time brought forth the lack of QBs itself as the reason for not joining/choosing not to stay. And any comment pointing out the possibility to link to other posts or even switch to other Fediverse platforms that did have QBs consistently revealed that resistance to clout chasing was the underlying issue.

@futurebird @mekkaokereke

I guess it's situtational. That wasn't the case for my timelines either here or on Twitter ... in general it was mostly the racism and other stuff that also showed up in Erin's survey last summer. https://erinkissane.com/mastodon-is-easy-and-fun-except-when-it-isnt

I don't actually think the fedierse is particularly resistant to clout chasing in general. Taylor Lorenz, Robert Reich, George Takei, Neil Gaiman, and quite a few self-promotional white tech influencers all do just fine here. It's more that there are antiboides against a few particular kinds of high-visibility accounts -- so non-tech journalists, self-promitional non-tech influernces, high-profile activists and organizers, and celebreties all get lumped together as clout chasers. So yeah, they're all likely to have a much better experience on Bluesky

@[email protected]

@jdp23 @fromjason @eniko @oblomov Bluesky is more like Twitter because of for-you-style algorithms. I hate those, but many many many people love them and see them as central to social media. I think that’s the core issue for lots of people, so I don’t expect them to show up here.

There are algorithms here too -- Mastodon's Explore page and Trending Topics, now recommendations for new people to follow. But they haven't increased the percentage of people who stick around after showing up.

And last time I asked around, people how have been on Bluesky for a while spent most of their time on the Following feed (which is similar to Mastodon's home feed: chronological posts and boosts from people you follow, with some replies from people you follow as well).

So, there are algorithms in both places. One big difference is that Bluesky gives you the ability to choose between multiple feeds, which is very useful (and one of the areas they go beyond Twitter). It would also be useful to see something like that here but I don't think its absence is a big reason why the overwhelming majority of people who show up here decide not to stay.

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]

@jdp23 @fromjason @eniko @oblomov It’s the crickets, that’s why.

That was the primary feedback I got from moving 143 friends off Twitter and onto my own community Masto instance here. Most have gone back to Twitter and/or play around in Bluesky and Threads. They want an algo—federated feed doesn’t cut it for them, even though I spent a lot of time curating hashtag relays they’d enjoy—and more engagement from randos.