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I just realized that I don't need to argue with y'all about:
* Starter packs
* Composable moderation
* Quote tweets
* Paying trust & safety engineers for their labor
* Funding stuff without VC or begging for donations
* If UX is possible without VC money
I don't need to argue with y'all about any of this. I'm not asking for your permission or your help. I'm telling you what's going to happen.
Mastodon is moving in the right direction, just slowly. It could be faster with funding + focus.
1/N
I said what I said about Mastodon moving too slowly to matter for the US midterms, so BlueSky being our best bet.
I said what I said about me being wrong about thinking that Mastodon would get it together by now.
I said what I said about BlueSky making it okay that Mastodon moves slower, and it not necessarily being over in the long run. We're watching people leave Twitter at a rate of 1 million a day. If BlueSky does go bad, and a better option is available, I anticipate a similar exit.
2/N
Here's my list of "statements that I want to be true" for 2025.
* Mastodon will have Starter packs
* Mastodon will have Composable moderation
* Mastodon will have Quote tweets
* More people will be paid to work full-time on Fediverse trust & safety in 2025, than in the history of the Fediverse up until this point
* Mastodon will be better funded in 2025 than any year prior, without accepting any VC money
* More people will work full time on Fediverse UX than any year prior
Bet against me.
3/N
@mekkaokereke I'm all for something like starter packs, but the devil is in the details. There appears to be serious server issues that starter packs could potentially exacerbate, if not addressed first.
https://elk.zone/mastodon.social/@KraftTea/113519877780405274
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.ioYes, that's a real issue, but has nothing to do with starter packs.
https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109694404895541101
If we picture a world with 500M people on Mastodon, the infra design breaks a lot of smaller sites. Conversely, BlueSky's infra choices don't break smaller sites. I do love your focus on what it means for Fediverse to be a better Internet citizen.
"Mastodon only works because it's not popular! Stop making it popular!" is probably not the message we should lead with.
From the admittedly small experience so far with Follow Packs feel like the issues we need to address to make packs work and be safe is both consent and size.
People need a way to remove themselves if they don't want to be listed.
Packs need to be manageable in size. It they are too big the originator can't possibly do a good job when issues arise.
Too big also makes them potentially more problematic both technically and socially.
1/n
Be very curious your thoughts on groupings and the potential for targeted abuse. So far the follow packs are things like astronomy. No one goes after astronomers. But when packs start grouping accounts by race and gender there may be targeting issues. Should this be a particular concern, or is it just a part of the overall moderation and abuse issue?
@mastodonmigration @mekkaokereke @KraftTea My impression is that it's harmful to have groupings like "$gender in $field" or "$race in $field", for reasons of targeting and others. Instead fix the under representation in the main $field list by including folks.
It's part of the overall moderation and abuse issues.
It's not that hard to figure out how to give users control over if they are included in starter packs or not. BlueSky hasn't done this yet, but should.
It's not that hard to moderate accounts that make starter packs for the purpose of abusing other users.
But even still, there are like 15 more important abuse vectors that need to be closed down before I worry about starter packs.
Thanks. That is good feedback.
@mastodonmigration @mekkaokereke It seems to me that people need to not just be recommended to, say, an author they like, but also to people they can legitimately befriend and interact with, who are followers / active commenters.
New users can't expect to generate a lot of friends, comments, etc. from professional content creators.
Generating a limited deck of varying but relevant people might be more useful for all concerned than a pure top-40 list.
I'll be honest... Guys on Mastodon that don't even know what starter packs are, but spout off about them based on half knowledge of what they think they are, are really annoying. Like, super annoying.
Starter packs are created by users and contain micro-communities. They're not just giant influencer follow lists. Which is part of why there are *more* person to person conversations on BlueSky than Mastodon. Much more. It's not close.
Here's how starter packs really work:
Suppose you stayed on Twitter because you ran a local model airplane club, and your club met and chatted and DM'd there. The club had 80 members.
30 moved to BlueSky, but most of the convos are still on Twitter
You make a starter pack called "[town name] model airplane club." You put the 30 who moved to BlueSky in it. The starter pack is now attached to your account. It makes it easier for the other 50 people to join BlueSky.
You make a thread on Twitter saying, "This is the last post on Twitter for [Town name] model airplane club. It's been a good run! You can find me on Blue Sky. Click on my starter pack to follow everyone."
That's how communities are moving to Blue Sky from Twitter, and not missing a beat.
@mekkaokereke @mastodonmigration Sounds great, targeted and relevant.
My concern isn't with the model airplane club finding its members, though.
Yes. This is the right model for starter packs. Think of them as seeds. When you follow a group of people from a particular topical area. You quickly get boosted posts of others with related interests, who you can follow if they appeal to you. The important thing is to get a critical mass.
As discussed above if the pack is too big it generates kind of an overload and is hard for the pack originator to manage.
Feel like the best size is around 25 accounts.
1/n
The other thing, and don't know if Bluesky does this, but they should load into a list. Again, experience from the last few days, this is critical. See example below. The Astronomy follow packs load into a list called "Astro" this becomes a "feed" that whenever you want to see what is going on in astronomy you can click on the Astro list. You can also add other astronomy accounts to the list. Additional packs can also be loaded. The list functionality is important.
@mekkaokereke @KraftTea @mastodonmigration This is how I've seen starter packs work. (BTW I've seen people mix up feeds and starter packs too.)
A friend on Bluesky who is also on Mastodon just "took a break" from Mastodon! Because of all the fretting from folks here who do not even have a Bluesky account.
The low-info fretting has taken over the original reasons for being here.
"I'm not on Bluesky, but..." doesn't help, and it doesn't make commenters here look smarter.
@mekkaokereke I can only speak of what a disaster for #lgbtqia people a commercially-biased, top-40esque formatting has been for us. I'm sure there are endless parallels in other communities.
i.e. When it comes to journalism, Andrew Sullivan has, until quite recently, ruled the roost when it came to #lgbtqia figures, for nearly twenty years, in a kind of right-wing putsch. As the media feted and tripped over themselves to platform him, he eviscerated our community.
https://www.metafilter.com/86228/US-Military-Cuts-And-A-Step-Towards-Equality#2802554
@mekkaokereke I can understand your desire for people to be able to find those who are well-known, but you should at least realize that emphasis comes at a price.
The #transgender community on #mastodon, in particular, is very strong. They fled here because of hate. Starter packs could easily ghetto-ize their presence here. What I'm thinking of is more like the formatting I experienced in public radio. We'd play stars, but also three other tiers.
More tiers, more protection of diversity.
@mekkaokereke If we REALLY want to encourage growth & diversity, we should realize we're inheriting some bad demographics here at Mastodon. Platforming aging developers and niche influencers is valuable, yes... but in a limited way.
We SHOULD be focusing on younger demographics.
Which is another reason why we should be careful of a solution that leans ageist, without showcasing diversity and youth, when they're a LOT of our future going forward.
We lost the short game. Let's win the long one.
BlueSky users skew younger than Mastodon. Again, in large part because Black Americans are young, and white Americans are old.
The most common age for a Black person in the US is 27. For white people, it's 58. A place with no Black folks tends to be older.
This is why white people trick themselves every year into thinking that young voters are less racist. No. Young voters have more Black people. Every generation of white folks votes pretty much the same.
@mekkaokereke "BlueSky users skew younger than Mastodon. Again, in large part because Black Americans are young, and white Americans are old."
In part, although the Hispanic/Latino population is about 50% larger now, growing faster, and about 2.1 years younger than the median age of Black Americans.
(This is why I tend to encourage MUCH more concentration upon helping minority groups to register themselves, based on the influence of people such as Steve Phillips.)
https://elk.zone/mastodon.social/@KraftTea/112889701096866096
@KraftTea on that we agree!
You had me at "voter registration."
The transgender community on Mastodon is not "very strong." Only people that see the world through white eyes think that it's super strong. Because they don't even notice the lack of Black trans people.
https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/113517664776373714
The transgender community on BlueSky is much stronger, in large part because it has thousands of Black trans users. Thousands.
BlueSky probably has more Black trans people than Mastodon has Black people period.
And I'm choosing to ignore "ghetto-ize."