Thanks to decisions made by Elon Musk and others, the internet is becoming unknowable - it can't be studied, can't be reported on, and it's very bad news for democracy. This month's column for Prospect (UK): https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/technology/63752/when-internet-becomes-unknowable-social-media-tools
@ethanz @mastodonmigration this article is misleading. Walled internet is becoming difficult to impossible to research, but this is also one of many reasons people are finding alternatives to it, so starting to research platforms like Mastodon makes ever more sense
@pzriddle @ethanz @mastodonmigration this is a very interesting conversation, but I don't see it as negative at all.
Regarding many servers with different access policies: this is how user research should be done: reaching out to the relevant community and with respect for their willingness to participate in research. Treating FB or Twitter users as representative for society was problematic on its own.
As for parallel networks, there's an obsession with nazism, but anonymous (think 4chan) or darknet communities are already abundant. Other than the extremes, there's room for a lot of pluralism and parallel communities.
@mapto @ethanz @mastodonmigration Correct me if I'm wrong, but Mastodon is by design hard to research too. A million servers, many with policies intended to keep spiderbots out, and a culture which is hostile to the very idea of findability - no?
One of the things about Mastodon that haunts me is that despite all our self-congratulation about an architecture which supposedly blocks nazis, they could all be in a parallel Fediverse we don't see.