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@Shoq

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Shoq

@Shoq

Nov 26, 2022

I hear this a lot, Mags, my friend. Permit me this rant as I try to reset what I think is some bad commentary going around about the Fediverse.

To begin, I believe your memory of Twitter is a false memory. A common one, but still false.

Twitter always 1/32

𝙨𝙪𝙘𝙠𝙚𝙙 at keeping up with news.

With nothing but random, often noisy and spammy hashtags (also in the Fediverse, but done better), a terrible search engine that was crippled by design and most never knew how use anyway, we all had to improvise. So we pieced 2/32

together the news as it was poorly relayed from news orgs (already moving to the fedi), and those who we followed or monitored with lists. Twitter never bothered to “teach” people how to use Twitter very well, because doing so would reveal just how bad it was at 3/32

Read 34 tweets

Shoq

@Shoq

Nov 25, 2022

So, those who know me know I’ve been advocating for an Internet side road for almost as long as some have been alive. A parallel digital highway that journalists, fact-checkers, academics, scientists, and other “serious people” use to communicate with each other, 1/5

so they can help influence everyone else with serious information, ideas, policy proposals, and authorship. And what attracts them would be having the tools to communicate and share information efficiently, but with real feedback loops that don’t degenerate into 2/5

bedlam as comment sections and reply threads have. They wouldn’t just post something once or twice and move on, but actually advocate for, and actively engage about the content they’ve shared.

Well, ironically, maybe the moment has come. Perhaps enough of 3/5

Read 5 tweets

Shoq

@Shoq

Nov 24, 2022

As some recall, I’ve been “shadowbanned,” on Twitter for years. Not classically, because we don’t know what they actually do, but basically, nothing I post goes beyond people who engage me fairly regularly, and RTs of me are squelched completely by the algorithm. It’s …

been this way for over 9 years. But now, without that fake constraints on my account over on Mastodon, I regularly have posts that soar. No one knows or cares what the actual “count” is. But you can see them flying by in notifies. I won’t miss that part of Twitter.

This is an important part of the Fediverse. People still do silly shit like take pride in how many followers they have, but there is no competition and score card for retweets or likes. The best tell of popularity is favorites (known only to you), and followers.

And …

Read 4 tweets

Shoq

@Shoq

Nov 5, 2022

𝗔𝗕𝗢𝗨𝗧 𝗠𝗔𝗦𝗧𝗢𝗗𝗢𝗡
Let me explain what is happening. In just the last week, thanks to Elon Musk’s weird business style, a medium-sized army of branded journalists, academics, entertainers, technologists, activists, and other influencers all descended on …

Mastodon in a matter of a few days. At least 6 major newspapers and broadcasters have set up their own servers for their staffs and customers. With the exception of that last part, these are levels and qualities of influencers that took twitter 3 years to acquire, …

with billions of dollars to behind them.

For the most part, the reaction has been amazing. After a brief and confusing orientation, people discover it’s just like Twitter, but more serious, and with far fewer assholes, trolls, and right-wing freaks spewing …

Read 6 tweets

Shoq

@Shoq

Oct 8, 2022

I still can’t believe we’re talking about anything other than stopping this terrorism of stupid. And that’s what it is: really ignorant people, with no idea of how anything works, or where their wealth and privilege came from, thinking only THEY know how things should be.

If you’re still focused on abortion, or climate change, or nuclear war, or book banning, or trans athletes, or inflation, you’re missing the whole plot. If we don’t stop this anti-democracy movement, ALL those issues will become moot.

Like shingles, fascism doesn’t care.

@MSNBC

I think the shows that @MSNBC offers lately are acting as buffers that keep us thinking “someone out there is doing something. We just have to wait it out.” It’s a delusion that Comcast is happy to promote. Their mission is money. That’s all that matters. To them.

Read 4 tweets

Shoq

@Shoq

Oct 8, 2022

@mr_electrico

Thinking about something @mr_electrico said once about looking to scifi for ideas about how we might get out of this mess. But it occurs to me that any fiction will do. We should write hypothetical endings to this awful movie where humanity and the Enlightenment survive.

@Mr_Electrico

@Mr_Electrico Consider those movies where good people do bad things in order to call attention to far worse things. Well, imagine one of those things happening today, where we all wake up to massive multi-media circus because someone (in a very well-designed and hardened 1/7

@Mr_Electrico

@Mr_Electrico fortress) was threatening to push a button that would immediately ________ a few hundred ________ unless Congress immediately passed several critically needed reforms that put new guardrails in place to protect our democracy.

The perp’s goal is to force the media 2/7

Read 8 tweets

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