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She has a real good example of how algorithms on platforms like Instagram not only try to make you addicted but also divide us even more

I real LOVE the fact Mastodon and most of the Fediverse software avoids this all together

@stux

🤔 People keep saying that Mastodon doesn't have this problem "because no algorithms," but Mastodon absolutely does have this problem.

For example, whether or not a fediverse user sees this post that I'm writing right now, depends on whether or not their admin thinks that they should see posts from hachyderm, or from me in particular. 🤷🏿‍♂️

Someone is still deciding which replies you see and which ones you don't see, presumably for your safety and enjoyment.

@mekkaokereke True but it does NOT serve you posts based on who you are, you are and what you like to fuel the fire even more 😉

The only thing that could happen is that posts are missing because of blocks indeed

@stux

Yes it does. It's just slower and more manual.

Because in Mastodon, a boost is closer to a "like" on other platforms.

If I start boosting a lot of crypto spam, mods on other servers will be like, "Crypto spam?! Seriously?! What happened to him?! This dude sucks now! Hachyderm, handle that, or else!" Then if Hachyderm doesn't, other admins may defed Hachyderm, or block me individually.

Instances that don't like people that like crypto spam, don't let their users see my posts.

@stux

On all platforms, a like and a boost communicate two things:

1) I enjoyed this! (Enjoy)
2) Other people should see this! (Visibility)

On a platform like TikTok, the "like" button gives a score of 1.0 to "Enjoy" and N<1.0 to "Visibility." TikTok gives the "repost" button a score of N>0.0 to "Enjoy" and N<1.0 to "Visibility."

Mastodon gives the "like" button a score of 1.0 to "Enjoy" and 0.0 to "Visibility." It gives boost a score of 1.0 to "Enjoy" and a score of 1.0 to "Visibility."

@mekkaokereke Also, replies are always in the "same order", ofc sometimes some are missing due to blocks or non-federated etc

But it won't give a per-user based selection of replies based on once interested/gender etc

I count that as a win

@stux

Maybe?

Other social:
"Everyone sees every reply! But we fiddle with the order!"

Mastodon:
"Not everyone sees every reply! But the order of posts that are seen, is guaranteed to be strictly reverse chronological!"

Different trade-offs inherent in the architecture of each.

I've posted on here before about how Mastodon's trade-off makes it much easier to racially abuse Black people in the replies, and puts more of the burden of reporting that abuse on victims rather than the community.

@mekkaokereke @stux Honestly speaking as a social media abuse survivor – as a survivor of abuse by these very social media platforms, by their interfaces, by their affordances, by their (deliberate) limitations – all things that can be called “dispositives of power”, following Michel Foucault's theory –, I can tell you without a shadow of doubt that Mastodon makes people more violent and that other social media platforms like Diaspora* are, at worst, sponging negativity coming from other social media platforms, including Mastodon, as well as other forms of AFK oppression.

I do not meant that there would be no racism problem over here, or that it would boil down to an attempt at open sourcing tobacco. There's a lot of important stuff to be said about it, about the whiteness of the communities involved on Mastodon, including the open tech community and unfortunately too many activist, antifascist circles. But I also notice that the perpetrators – who could be prosecuted according to the French law – are themselves stuck in echo chambers, in a form of double exploitation as makers and consumers of assets, in a mostly closed circuit, isolating them from a differentiated society that would therefore fit into Erving Goffman's theory of “total institutions”. This is the result of deliberate design decisions from Twitter, but also from Facebook and Instagram, of which Mastodon, as a Twitter clone nostalgic of the “good old times”, isn't sanitized (and isn't meant to be).

As a result, many Mastodon users are disenchanted toward open tech because they expected this pile of glittery poop to save their lives, whereas it's doing too little for them, and often begrudgingly. This is why we should
all, including white people, put more attention and funding into Aer0h's work on Fipamo.

@mekkaokereke @stux what was the reasoning behind the “me, receiver and my followers” visibility setting? It seems custom made for harassers…

@mekkaokereke @stux Other social would be better described as:
“Nobody sees every post or reply. We choose which posts and replies you see and in which order based on categories that our advertisers care about that we don’t disclose to you.”

And Mastodon is:
“By default, everyone sees a subset of replies based on the community instance they are a member of, who they follow, and who other people in their community follow, and how much of their timeline they bother reading. But anyone can also choose to see the replies as the original poster sees them. And everyone can choose how the replies they do see are ordered.”

Absolutely different trade-offs in each.

I wish there were more people in the fediverse as a whole who would quote-repost racists and other bigots behind a content warning and with a hashtag that let the rest of the community find the bad actors and report them.

It is technically possible, if you join an instance that only allows men, or women. The reason the Fediverse does not have this is it does not collect data on who we are. Admins don't know the gender, ethnicity, or even the political leanings of their users. This causes great drama when someone is doxed to be in conflict with the admins, but it protects us from being strategically bubbled. That doxing in fact is exactly what causes behavior like on Instagram, when banned users are driven to more extremist instances that censor opposing viewpoints. It's all about how much is known about us.

CC: @mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io