Domain not in remote thumbnail source whitelist: dataprotection.social
from Carey Lening :blobcatverified:
@ploum@mamot.fr @claudegohier@mastodon.xyz @dangillmor@mastodon.social
1. My previous default network was Twitter, and my followers were all over the map -- likely due to being there for over a decade and me having a weird group of friends across a lot of different points in my life.
There is less diversity (at least based on my followers). It skews far more techie, queer, and male. That said, I don't know if I would characterize Mastodon as niche currently - but as I said "I suspect that Masto ... _will_ be a very small group of folks who share a very specific worldview" -- at least if defederation is widely adopted and downstream defederation occurs. If we go to a more moderate approach, the results may vary.
Separately, there's also evidence that active users on Mastodon (and servers) are going down organically. See: https://api.joinmastodon.org/statistics and that may exacerbate the problem.
Some people, are of course, totally fine with that, and I suspect the people who are fine with that will stick around regardless, even if a splintered version of Masto exists. But I think it's hard to argue that if a schism occurs, it _wouldnt_ lead to a more niche Mastodon experience.
2. I think there are too many closed universes already (closed groups, tribes and subcultures, diametrically opposed political factions, etc. I _personally_ don't find those to be interesting or enriching. It's been my experience over the last three decades online that the more insular or hyper-specialized a group, the more It leads to echo-chambers, and sadly, extremist positions.
I _personally_ like a lot of different things, and read and listen to a lot of varied voices (and I'm forcing myself to broaden that even more since I've started writing in earnest). I try to desperately avoid absolutist positions (though I acknowledge that sometimes I fail). I try to think about systemic failures and cross-interest observations of problems. That is, IMHO, only really possible if you expose yourself to a lot of different, and sometimes disagreeable perspectives.
That isn't to say that I hang out with (or advocate condoning) nazis or fash, or TERFs, or am some sort of freezepeeches absolutist. I'm not. But I get that problems rarely have a single explanation, and when you realize that, you gain a little empathy and perspective on why black/white approaches tend to be more harm than good. Or in my case, why I can see Facebook as evil and still hold the view that the company != every user.
Carey Lening :blobcatverified:
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