simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Friday, 05-Jan-2024 10:37:38 JST
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I guess the main reason why platforms like Twitter act so disruptively and end as vortexes of vileness is not some "algorithm" (deus ex machina nonsense) but the deliberate design of the platform to provide content without context.
That is: The platform is designed in a way that context to a post cannot be attached or cannot accompany the post, so that all that is left is a stream of impulses (like shouting) to which the reader/recipient can only react by denial, embrace, or some other feeling and its expression. At most, context is provided in a limited sense by replies and conversations, but that is a small remedy given how poorly conversations can be created and grow in a threaded way with limited characters per post.
The #Fediverse shows that context can be "attached" to content, that content can stop being a scream and instead can be an idea or thought, embedded in and growing from a concetenation of other posts becoming its context. The remedy seems simply:
• Allow for more characters in a post so that the post can provide space for its own context
• Don't trigger users by a constant influx of and bombardment with "user tailored" content from different sources.
• Provide a decent moderation policy and its enforcement that focuses less on content but on style and tone.
• Provide users with the means to shield their Home TLs from content, tones, and persons they don't want to have around.
• Remind people that "social" media are auditory media using the vehicle of writing (these are not letters exchanged but snippets of conversations thrown back and forth across the dinner table). Make room for silence. Remind people there are people on the other end. That is: Prohibt easy means for talking to strangers directly (e.g., force them to subscribe first before they can talk to people).
• Remind people and yourself that instances are not apartment buildings with noisy tenants and a landlord in need of calling the cops. Instances are conversations which contribute to the respectability of that instance. In fact, instances are not houses but door sills – into other conversations. Nobody lives on a door sill.
More advanced steps would be:
• Use IRC-styled platforms and get rid of threads (with the exception of documenting the conversations as threads after they have ended).
• Reward silence and pause in a conversation (e.g., by inflating a bubble in the stream of conversation)
• Find means to "share in" instead of "share something".
Just a few thoughts, that is.