Naunihal Singh (@naunihal@mastodon.social)
mastodon.social
TLDR: Mastodon is very white, male, status quo, global north, and designed in a way to limit its potential for use in social movements. Mastodon feels very different from Twitter, deliberately. It is truly like Live Journal. It is about people who are happy with their social circle and who think of virality and discoverability as a problem. They just want to communicate with the people they know, and limit other things. Ironically, it is more like a private gathering than a public space.
  • 0x1C3B00DA@lemmy.ml
    2·
    2 years ago

    This has been the case since mastodon’s inception. Feature requests that were supported by a wide swath of the community have been shot down by gargron because he controls mainline. Changes have been made before without any discussion with or headsup to admins, even changes that instance admins can’t control.

    If ppl want that to change, they need to move software. Move to a completely different implementation or move to a masto fork. Stop donating to the mastodon patreon and donate to the forks or other software. Help other groups in the fediverse get more influence so garg doesn’t get to run over everyone else.

  • fleurc@lemmy.ml
    21·
    2 years ago

    Thr article’s TLDR is not wrong, what is wrong is its title, because that’s Internet design and has always been.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
      11·
      2 years ago

      There is nothing inherent about the design of the internet that prevents information from spreading and going viral. The thread is talking about some design decisions that Mastodon makes that are at odds with propagation of information through the network.

      • Ferk@lemmy.ml
        1·
        2 years ago

        I’d argue it’s search engines and social networks the ones that grant any level of "virality and discoverability ", not the internet itself. In the internet you need “third party” solutions for indexing or searching.

        I mean, Mastodon probably intentionally lacks tools that enhance “virality and discoverability”, but that’s not the same thing as saying that it actively prevents information spread. You could in theory build a search engine for toots, or an alternate fork that does have those features. It’s even free and open source software, so it’s open to whatever.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
          11·
          2 years ago

          Right, the internet is just a network that more complex things like social networks are built on top of. Hence why the question is with the design of Mastodon and completely unrelated to how the internet works fundamentally.

          And I didn’t say Mastodon actively prevents propagation, rather that some design decisions are at odds with viral propagation. It could be possible to build separate tooling on top, or to create forks that are more friendly towards propagation. However, Mastodon is by far the biggest ActivityPub based network right now, and the way it works plays a huge role for how Fediverse can be used at the moment.