Eubie Drew (QOTO 🦣) @EubieDrew@social.cleverlibre.org

*stealth mode activated*

7/Third, bigger isn't better. While people are certainly welcome to operate big mastodon instances, size will invite more moderation challenges and drama. Concentrated power over moderation/federation decisions will tend to draw challengers and drama.

This can be avoided by keeping instances to a more manageable size, and I think will ultimately tend to help grow cross-cutting social ties.

We simply shouldn't be looking to replicate Twitter (or other platforms) here.

6/First, optimize for cross-cutting social ties. Excess optimizing for homophily will tend to make people more reactive, subject to behavioral control, and will tend to make us more unruly and less able to self-govern. Human curation, randomness, and lack of algorithms optimizing for "engagement" can help a LOT.

Second, clout-chasing and hustle culture are antagonistic. Trying to be the biggest, most important or elite here will tend to create drama and noise that erodes cross-cutting ties.

@majorlinux @BlackAzizAnansi that speaks to a larger issue about capitalism and survival. Many Black folks have found social media to be a useful tool to earn a living way above what any job could pay them, and unfortunately over the past decade developers were paid to figure out ways to keep users on their platforms and Black content creators were nurtured in that consciousness. Mastodon is a different why. This culture is more for developers, so it’s different.

I really appreciated this piece from Clive Thompson (@clive) about Mastodon's "antiviral" design.

https://uxdesign.cc/mastodon-is-antiviral-design-42f090ab8d51

It's not an unabashedly good thing to be anti-viral. It's not great for activists who are trying to change media agendas. I come away from Clive's piece increasingly convinced that we need a wide variety of different platforms, from the very broad to the very small, and tools that help us aggregate, filter and navigate those different networks.

GoComics.com is still offline. Here is today's installment of Super-Fun-Pak Comix
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https://tomdbug.wpcomstaging.com

I...do not understand how electricity works.