I think this is inevitable when your community is basically a splinter group from some incumbent which ends up being an identity-level trait of that splinter group.
It contributes to a culture of NOT being like the incumbent instead of a culture of existing alongside the incumbent. Another example would be Reddit clones like Voat and, sometimes, even HN.
When I was a pre-teen, I was banned from NeoGAF, the massive gaming forum, and joined a forum that was basically a bunch of NeoGAF rejects. While I enjoyed it at the time, it could never be its own stand-alone gaming community and, a decade later, still wasn't. Sometimes you had to know about NeoGAF and its current events if you wanted to fit in and understand content on the splinter forum, yet the splinter forum also would want you to believe they weren't in fact chomping at the bit for more NeoGAF/evilore drama.
Mastodon reminds me of that, especially after Musk's purchase of Twitter where Mastodon became even more toxic and gleefully adolescent in its anti-birdsite-isms.
On the other hand 4Chan was basically formed when Somethingawful kicked a bunch of weebs off of their forums. They somehow managed to find their own identity.
Yeah, there are exceptions where the splinter outgrows the incumbent.
I know nothing about 4chan much less its early days, but maybe 4chan didn't have the "at least we're not Something Awful" culture, or maybe it was unique enough to attract enough new blood that had no clue what Something Awful was.
> - People get real nasty about others going back to “the birdsite”
> I want to focus on the last point because this has definitely been a contributor to my recent ick. I’ve noticed a few folks getting frankly, horrible about people moving back to Twitter recently and I think it’s a bit unfair.
I think it's a bit unfair to say that "Mastodon" is giving you "the ick" when you really mean that a few folks on Mastodon are giving you the ick.
I'm on Mastodon, and I haven't seen this at all. I'm not saying it doesn't exist — a bunch of crap exists on every social network — I'm saying that the author seems to be guilty of stereotyping the platform.
Sure, I've definitely seen that. But that wasn't one of the author's complaints. Instead there was the rather strange complaint:
> People relentlessly calling Twitter the “birdsite”
Twitter users have been calling Twitter the birdsite since forever, so I don't get the criticism of Mastodon. Maybe now though we'll start calling it the dogsite.
Mastadon depends a lot on what instance you're on. You're community is primarily your instance and non-instance users are secondary (discovery is bad outside the instance). Unlike Twitter you have to be intentional about your community.
I've been on Mastadon since before Musk said anything about buying Twitter. I never viewed it as a Twitter replacement, but I never spent much time on Twitter to begin with.
I think a lot of people came to Mastadon to look for "Twitter but not Twitter". That's never going to exist. Not in decentralized form, not otherwise.
> Mastadon depends a lot on what instance you're on. You're community is primarily your instance and non-instance users are secondary
I don't agree with this at all. Most of my following and followers are on other instances, and that seems to be true of them too, unless you happen to be on the biggest instance mastodon.social, which has a disproportionate number of total Mastodon users, but as a result also doesn't have much of a "community" is such.
New Mastodon users, especially Twitter refugees, tend to sign up for whatever instances happen to be available for signup at the time.
It's interesting that we have such different experiences. I'm on a small instance that's mostly insular. I have a good experience anytime I'm looking at local feeds, but anytime I look at the global feed or search outside the instance the results are very low quality. I follow people outside my instance, but never ones I've discovered through Mastadon.
Depends on what you mean by "insufferable". The people who moved to Mastodon include people like Stephen Fry and Neil Gaiman. If that's your definition of insufferable, then please stay on Twitter. There's significantly less shitposting on the Fediverse than on Twitter, though probably more on Mastodon than on other parts of the Fediverse.
I don't see enough evidence that Musk is a Nazi, but he does seem more fine with Nazis than with people who disagree with him. Twitter is slowly turning into his private propaganda network. It's entirely reasonable to look for something better.
I suggest "Nazi adjacent" to describe people like Elon, who don't hold explicitly white supremacist, racist or anti-semitic beliefs (that we're aware of) but who seem to find camaraderie with such people out of a common disdain for "the wokes."
Depends. Did you spend 40 billion dollars to buy a social media platform you believe to be a "woke hivemind", unban the racists and bigots and force right-wing content into people's feeds just to fuck with them?
Or more generally, are you tolerant of, or even willing to spread, racist and bigoted speech because you have an enemy in common? Because you agree more than you disagree? Are you willing to put up with the spread of right-wing authoritarianism just to see "the woke" suffer? When the nazis show up to your events, do you chase them away and denounce them, or let them be?
I think the "Nazi" epithet just shows a lack of imagination and historical knowledge by those who use it, basically Godwin's Law exemplified. After all, on the American side, the Confederacy predated Nazi Germany by 70 years or so, and with regard to Musk, he comes from South Africa with its own history of Apartheid, so there are much more relevant antecedents, if you want to go there. It feels like "Nazi" has become a just an empty, generic stand-in for "really bad". To be honest, it's difficult for me to take anyone seriously who throws it around like that, regardless of how I feel about the target of the insults. (I'd say the same about "woke" too, by the way.)
> It feels like "Nazi" has become a just an empty, generic stand-in for "really bad".
Well... yes. Language evolves and terms generalize over time as the context in which they're used gains distance from their original meaning. No one is accusing Elon Musk of being a member of the German National Socialist Workers' Party.
> Language evolves and terms generalize over time as the context in which they're used gains distance from their original meaning.
Yes, but I'm old enough to remember being told that we should "never forget" the Holocaust. Perhaps people are already forgetting though. I think it's a mistake, indeed a moral error, to trivialize this word.
> No one is accusing Elon Musk of being a member of the German National Socialist Workers' Party.
The problem is that hyperbole never helps one's case, only makes it worse.
Some people have already forgotten, but many others do remember the holocaust, and are quite alarmed by recent developments. As Mike Godwin said: it's okay to call them Nazis if they do behave like that.
It had become a meaningless word back when Godwin coined his law, but not anymore. There really is a strong push towards some form of fascism, in the US, in Russia, and in many places in Europe. It's important to call it out and to fight it.
Well, fascism is another one of those words thrown about too casually and inaccurately nowadays.
Going back to my original comment, though, my thesis wasn't that people have forgotten the Holocaust but rather the opposite: people seem to have no historical awareness or metaphors except from World War II. This may explain how these terms such as Nazi and fascist become generic and constantly used hyperbolically: without any other intellectual resources to draw from, people are forced to employ this language inaccurately. When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
> Well, fascism is another one of those words thrown about too casually and inaccurately nowadays.
Used to. It's unfortunately getting more accurate. Russia is pretty much full-blown fascist right now. Their propaganda ticks all the classic fascist talking points, and Putin is following much of Hitler's playbook. The one thing he lacks is the adoring crowds seeing him as the saviour of the nation. Trump has those. Again, he's doing a lot of the things Hitler did, including an attempt to overthrow the government.
Both rely on a glorification of an imagined past to sell their message. Both expect corporations to follow their government's lead. Both demonize critics and opposition, would really like to punish them (from "lock her up" to poisoning and defenetration), block press access (though to very different degrees), undermine civil rights that they feel is at odds with the traditionalism they use to sell their message, and try to sow division between the people who belong and the people who don't.
They're doing so in very different ways of course, and of course Putin is much further down that road, but the similarities are there.
DeSantis is another example, which his book bans and rewriting education to suit his political message. And see how he treats Disney World for refusing to toe the line and daring to criticise him.
All of these are elements of fascism. That doesn't mean they're ready to start another holocaust (though Putin definitely seems to be, and some Trump supporters seem to be leaning that way too), but they're absolutely warning signs, and we should be wary about the direction they're taking us.
> Russia is pretty much full-blown fascist right now. Their propaganda ticks all the classic fascist talking points, and Putin is following much of Hitler's playbook.
I mean... Putin is literally a former KGB agent, and Russia was a totalitarian regime until 1991. So I would argue that the Soviet Union is much more relevant in this case, as well as the Russian Empire that preceded it. Russian history is already there, we don't need to go borrow history from Germany or Italy.
> DeSantis is another example, which his book bans and rewriting education to suit his political message.
This to me is a trivialization of "fascism". And again, there's already a local history available, because American religious conservatives had long tried to ban books and control education, such as the teaching of evolution, sex education, history, etc.
I'm not praising lack of precision, just noting it, because outside of technical fields language is never precise, and expecting it to be so is a sign of bad faith and pedantry. "Nazi" has generally referred to authoritarianism, racism and anti-semitism and more specifically the neo-Nazi movement for a very long time, and its spike in prominence with the right-wing shift in American politics post Trump isn't entirely coincidental. Context, as always, matters.
I'll damn hyperbole all day long, though, because I think people hide their malice behind it too often and it tends to poison the well.
The bit about tone policing is under appreciated IMHO. If you are very careful to never offend anyone then you will never be influential. Influence is about changing people's mind and people may be offended when you challenge their preconceived notions.
Now obviously you need moderation on large discussion platforms. The disproportionate effect of trolls can't be ignored, but it is possible and even easy at times to go overboard and create a space where nothing of value can be discussed. It's the sort of thing you see when people are complaining that a space feels stuffy and corporate.
I disagree. It's entirely possible to have discussions of value between people of differing beliefs without offense, certainly without purposely seeking to offend. That and the "influence" culture it creates is a large part of what people fled to Mastodon to avoid. You don't have a right to come into someone else's space and insist on telling them they're wrong about their beliefs or identity or whatever you take issue with. There are plenty of spaces on the internet where the rough-and-tumble of politics and argument and offense are welcome, but it doesn't have to be everywhere.
What is the point of the internet if not to tell people they are wrong?
But more seriously, you don't have to have the intention to offend to run afoul of overly restrictive policies. Even worse this can create an atmosphere of fear that stifles discussion. Self censorship is the most insidious form of censorship.
>But more seriously, you don't have to have the intention to offend to run afoul of overly restrictive policies
I don't have the intention to offend because I don't find value in offending people. Most of the people I follow on Mastodon are game developers, programmers or nerds of some sort. A lot of those people are also gay or trans or furries or any number of easily targeted demographics. I don't refuse to respect their pronouns or try to debunk their gender identity or whatever out of fear of the system but because I'm not homophobic or transphobic. Because I don't seek conflict wherever I go.
>Even worse this can create an atmosphere of fear that stifles discussion.
It doesn't though, there's plenty of discussion on Mastodon as far as I can tell. No one seems to be fearful about it. Not wanting to have the conversations you want to have isn't the same as being afraid to have them.
>Self censorship is the most insidious form of censorship.
Self censorship is maturity, it's potty-training and big-boy pants for the mind. Your assumption that the only reason anyone would have to exercise restraint and self control being fear is inaccurate. The most effective arguments I've come across counter to my own beliefs have been presented with an implicit respect for me as a person, civility and reason. People who go out of their way to insult me or twist my words in bad faith because they're chasing endorphins rather than ideas aren't liable to convince anyone of anything.
And yes, you have to follow the rules of the house. That's not oppression, that's society. If you don't like it, feel free to spin up your own Mastodon with blackjack and hookers, like Trump did.
The simplest way of describing mastodon is: its irrelevant.
Almost nothing in it mimicks that total twitter coverage of some big event, no matter your nieche.
And even though twitter now isnt like Twitter before, its still much much more alive than mastodon.
The only nieches that are active on mastodon are tech people and some governments and absolutely nothing else.
No sports, no news, heck even tech is smaller, and of course, want to search for something? Good luck.
I agree with the author, the whole thing distanced me from Twitter, tried fediverse but it ain't there mate.
I quite enjoy the people on Mastodon. Some of them are very irritating in the way that very online people are always irritating, but on the whole they're decent enough. (At least, the ones I see are. Mastodon is very varied.)
But I find the platform itself exceedingly irritating. The UI is horrible.
I was on Twitter since the '00s, gained a few tens of thousands of followers, lost interest over the years, only post about work, and with Musk acquiring Twitter, never read anything on it anymore. I did briefly get back into it in a big way prior to the acquisition, interacting with people properly for the first time in about a decade.
However, post-acquisition, I just don't give a fuck anymore. That's the only way I can put it. Since I stopped doom-scrolling Twitter, my mental health is that much better for it, and doom-scrolling was one of the worst things I did during the pandemic and the war beginning.
I don't even care to check out Mastodon. I think all these echo chambers are negative. I don't even really go on any kind of social media anymore.
> I've been saying this for months now. Mastodon (and the Fediverse in general) is a failed idea. It may not be visible now, but it will be in a few years down the line.
Funny, that's what we Mastodon users are saying about Twitter. ;-)
> I never had a Twitter account, and I don't even lurk
Interesting. Do you have a Mastodon account? Or are you just making grand pronouncements about things that you're completely unfamiliar with?
[EDIT:] And apparently you didn't have a Hacker News account until 15 minutes ago, so I have to wonder where exactly you've been allegedly saying things for months?
It contributes to a culture of NOT being like the incumbent instead of a culture of existing alongside the incumbent. Another example would be Reddit clones like Voat and, sometimes, even HN.
When I was a pre-teen, I was banned from NeoGAF, the massive gaming forum, and joined a forum that was basically a bunch of NeoGAF rejects. While I enjoyed it at the time, it could never be its own stand-alone gaming community and, a decade later, still wasn't. Sometimes you had to know about NeoGAF and its current events if you wanted to fit in and understand content on the splinter forum, yet the splinter forum also would want you to believe they weren't in fact chomping at the bit for more NeoGAF/evilore drama.
Mastodon reminds me of that, especially after Musk's purchase of Twitter where Mastodon became even more toxic and gleefully adolescent in its anti-birdsite-isms.