Fall of X
September 12, 2023 9:40 AM Subscribe
Pasting across multiple mastodon instances... ?
posted by joeyh at 10:00 AM on September 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by joeyh at 10:00 AM on September 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
"Without Twitter operating in its full capacity as a public utility"
But it wasn’t, and what actual polity would govern Twitter with the same sensibility as SJV-liberal ZIRP would?
posted by clew at 10:12 AM on September 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
But it wasn’t, and what actual polity would govern Twitter with the same sensibility as SJV-liberal ZIRP would?
posted by clew at 10:12 AM on September 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
Pasting across multiple mastodon instances... ?
Yeah, that leapt out at me too. That's a fundamental misunderstanding of how Mastodon works and is probably very confusing for anyone trying to actually follow this author there.
The fall of Twitter has done a real number not just on independent journalists, but also on all sorts of artists of various sorts who used it as a way to communicate with and find an audience. I personally know artists and musicians who are struggling hard right now to find an audience.
Happily, I've seen a real effort on Mastodon to boost people who are trying to make run of things there. At least one artist on Mastodon that I follow has said that he has a bigger following now than they ever had on Twitter, and I think that speaks to how community works differently on M than on T.
posted by hippybear at 10:15 AM on September 12, 2023 [28 favorites]
Yeah, that leapt out at me too. That's a fundamental misunderstanding of how Mastodon works and is probably very confusing for anyone trying to actually follow this author there.
The fall of Twitter has done a real number not just on independent journalists, but also on all sorts of artists of various sorts who used it as a way to communicate with and find an audience. I personally know artists and musicians who are struggling hard right now to find an audience.
Happily, I've seen a real effort on Mastodon to boost people who are trying to make run of things there. At least one artist on Mastodon that I follow has said that he has a bigger following now than they ever had on Twitter, and I think that speaks to how community works differently on M than on T.
posted by hippybear at 10:15 AM on September 12, 2023 [28 favorites]
Pasting across multiple mastodon instances... ?
I just looked up Andrea Grimes' Mastodon from my account on mastodon.social (one of the "main" instances, which should by default have federation to nearly all other Mastodon instances) and all I found were three mirrors of her Twitter account with 0 posts/followers each. If she's posting anything across "multiple" instances, she's not doing it under her own name/byline, which seems curious for a freelance journalist.
posted by Strange Interlude at 10:17 AM on September 12, 2023 [20 favorites]
I just looked up Andrea Grimes' Mastodon from my account on mastodon.social (one of the "main" instances, which should by default have federation to nearly all other Mastodon instances) and all I found were three mirrors of her Twitter account with 0 posts/followers each. If she's posting anything across "multiple" instances, she's not doing it under her own name/byline, which seems curious for a freelance journalist.
posted by Strange Interlude at 10:17 AM on September 12, 2023 [20 favorites]
At least one artist on Mastodon that I follow has said that he has a bigger following now than they ever had on Twitter, and I think that speaks to how community works differently on M than on T.
I've seen multiple authors and boardgame designers say that engagement on Bluesky (which is right around 1M users at the moment) is tremendously higher than Twitter ever was, but they don't know how that's translating to sales yet. However, it was always hard to tell how much Twitter follows or other engagement really translated to sales too.
posted by Etrigan at 10:25 AM on September 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
I've seen multiple authors and boardgame designers say that engagement on Bluesky (which is right around 1M users at the moment) is tremendously higher than Twitter ever was, but they don't know how that's translating to sales yet. However, it was always hard to tell how much Twitter follows or other engagement really translated to sales too.
posted by Etrigan at 10:25 AM on September 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Strange Interlude, I searched for her Twitter handle on mastodon.social and it found five accounts. Three of them had zero followers, but one on octodon.social has almost 600 followers. It's updated fairly regularly, with current stuff about the Paxton trial.
posted by Surely This at 10:41 AM on September 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Surely This at 10:41 AM on September 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm sure the "multiple mastodon instances" thing is an oblique reference to the fact that not everyone will federate with some of the journo instances.
posted by MagnificentVacuum at 10:46 AM on September 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by MagnificentVacuum at 10:46 AM on September 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
I got the link from Mastodon so they just have some level of engagement there.
posted by Artw at 10:48 AM on September 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Artw at 10:48 AM on September 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
As early as 2016, maybe earlier, you could see that a platform like Twitter in private hands was always going to have disastrous consequences.
I’m sad that so many people, like this author, have learned nothing from this experience and still wish for the “next Twitter”.
And Bluesky seems to be in the lead to be the next Twitter, and it is indeed another Twitter — down to the owner that enabled Nazis to rally and let Donald Trump tweet his way from being an obscure joke to an object of slavering obsession for journalists on Twitter. What do people think will happen if this takes off? This is exhausting.
Yes, it would be good to increase the reach of independent journalists. But not at the cost of the second Twitter pined for in the article. My faith in humanity is at an amazing all-time low, but I still think it is capable of coming up with a communication system that’s not social media.
posted by ignignokt at 10:57 AM on September 12, 2023 [23 favorites]
I’m sad that so many people, like this author, have learned nothing from this experience and still wish for the “next Twitter”.
And Bluesky seems to be in the lead to be the next Twitter, and it is indeed another Twitter — down to the owner that enabled Nazis to rally and let Donald Trump tweet his way from being an obscure joke to an object of slavering obsession for journalists on Twitter. What do people think will happen if this takes off? This is exhausting.
Yes, it would be good to increase the reach of independent journalists. But not at the cost of the second Twitter pined for in the article. My faith in humanity is at an amazing all-time low, but I still think it is capable of coming up with a communication system that’s not social media.
posted by ignignokt at 10:57 AM on September 12, 2023 [23 favorites]
mastodon.social (one of the "main" instances, which should by default have federation to nearly all other Mastodon instances)
Gosh, no. There is a distinct faction of the fediverse that is philosophically opposed to mastodon.social and its leadership, and/or see it as an endless well of reply guys and spam, and do not federate with it.
Many old school fedi people also have a default hostility towards corporations and journalists, well, probably more journalist focused instances like journa.host, which if I remember correctly, got blocked a lot due to initial
Part of the issue with finding Grimes' account is that the default search will only find things exactly as they appear in the profile, so "andrea grimes" with a space gets you the assortment of twitter repost bots, "andreagrimes" gets what appears to be her actual accounts on spore.social and octodon.social.
The actual quote from the piece is:
posted by zamboni at 11:02 AM on September 12, 2023 [22 favorites]
Gosh, no. There is a distinct faction of the fediverse that is philosophically opposed to mastodon.social and its leadership, and/or see it as an endless well of reply guys and spam, and do not federate with it.
Many old school fedi people also have a default hostility towards corporations and journalists, well, probably more journalist focused instances like journa.host, which if I remember correctly, got blocked a lot due to initial
badbehavior by journos encountering Mastodon for the first time.
Part of the issue with finding Grimes' account is that the default search will only find things exactly as they appear in the profile, so "andrea grimes" with a space gets you the assortment of twitter repost bots, "andreagrimes" gets what appears to be her actual accounts on spore.social and octodon.social.
The actual quote from the piece is:
When I publish something new, for example, I now have to spend significantly more time posting and adapting my work across the dozen or so platforms and Mastodon instances I now use in an attempt to engage the same folks I used to reach with one click on Twitter.
Dozenapplies to the two or more mastodon accounts, plus bluesky, Medium, and all her other accounts on other platforms. It'd be nice if they were listed on her website - if they are, I can't find it. That said, I suspect Grimes has a better idea of the obstacles here, rather than us opining on how she's doing social media wrong.
posted by zamboni at 11:02 AM on September 12, 2023 [22 favorites]
Is this the same Grimes that used to be married to Musk? I didn't realize it was a common last name.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 11:06 AM on September 12, 2023
posted by I-Write-Essays at 11:06 AM on September 12, 2023
Is this the same Grimes that used to be married to Musk? I didn't realize it was a common last name.
Grimes isn't even Grimes' last name.
posted by zamboni at 11:08 AM on September 12, 2023 [13 favorites]
Grimes isn't even Grimes' last name.
posted by zamboni at 11:08 AM on September 12, 2023 [13 favorites]
“Independent journalism” here is kind of conflating “freelance journalist” with “news paper|station|site independent of conglomerate capital”. The latter were killed and eaten first, and some freelancers survived in the wreckage. But the difference matters because even at the height of Twitter Twitter didn’t pay for journalism, it was the middleman between journalists and editors. There’s a direct quote in the article explaining this! Follow the money!
posted by clew at 11:12 AM on September 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by clew at 11:12 AM on September 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I would include the 2000s Blogosphere as part of independent journalism. It managed just fine before Twitter existed, although it's probably been completely destroyed by now with the rise of Social Media.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 11:16 AM on September 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by I-Write-Essays at 11:16 AM on September 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
There is a distinct faction of the fediverse that is philosophically opposed to mastodon.social and its leadership, and/or see it as an endless well of reply guys and spam, and do not federate with it.
Gotcha, I signed up for Mastodon quite early on (2017ish, when Twitter was still making terms-of-service exceptions for Trump as POTUS) but didn't start using my account until the last year. I'm guessing I didn't know about the mastodon.social drama because the people with ready critiques must have already defederated themselves away from it.
I did manage to find Andrea Grimes' actual accounts by searching "andreagrimes" as described, but it took me a couple of refreshes before those two missing accounts actually appeared. Very weird that the default search isn't smart enough to ignore spaces, which I guess is another data point for Mastodon not quite being ready for prime time.
posted by Strange Interlude at 11:18 AM on September 12, 2023
Gotcha, I signed up for Mastodon quite early on (2017ish, when Twitter was still making terms-of-service exceptions for Trump as POTUS) but didn't start using my account until the last year. I'm guessing I didn't know about the mastodon.social drama because the people with ready critiques must have already defederated themselves away from it.
I did manage to find Andrea Grimes' actual accounts by searching "andreagrimes" as described, but it took me a couple of refreshes before those two missing accounts actually appeared. Very weird that the default search isn't smart enough to ignore spaces, which I guess is another data point for Mastodon not quite being ready for prime time.
posted by Strange Interlude at 11:18 AM on September 12, 2023
On the other hand the fall of Twitter has meant a reduction in so-called news articles entirely comprised of tweeted reactions (of varying degrees of wit) to news non-events, so as a newspaper reader, if not a journalist, I can celebrate that.
posted by tavegyl at 11:52 AM on September 12, 2023 [19 favorites]
posted by tavegyl at 11:52 AM on September 12, 2023 [19 favorites]
“Indeed, Twitter could be a hell-hole of harassment and bigotry and bot-attacks even pre-Musk—and especially post-Trump—but it was also an important place for creators to promote their work.”
It was always, always a deal with the devil. You got the benefits it offered in exchange for squinting and looking away from the carnage every time the whirlwind descended on a new victim, and you prayed, hypocritically, that the bigots and the harassers and the doxxers wouldn’t come for you. Built into the shape of Twitter, what made it profitable and different from all other form of social media, was how easy it was to spark those firestorms of attention. Mourning its demise is just wishing you’d been able to get away with participating in an ugly, corrupt system without facing personal conséquences for a little longer. Twitter without bigots and bots isn’t Twitter, as everyone struggling to build a cleaner, replacement Twitter is finding out.
posted by Merricat Blackwood at 12:32 PM on September 12, 2023 [11 favorites]
It was always, always a deal with the devil. You got the benefits it offered in exchange for squinting and looking away from the carnage every time the whirlwind descended on a new victim, and you prayed, hypocritically, that the bigots and the harassers and the doxxers wouldn’t come for you. Built into the shape of Twitter, what made it profitable and different from all other form of social media, was how easy it was to spark those firestorms of attention. Mourning its demise is just wishing you’d been able to get away with participating in an ugly, corrupt system without facing personal conséquences for a little longer. Twitter without bigots and bots isn’t Twitter, as everyone struggling to build a cleaner, replacement Twitter is finding out.
posted by Merricat Blackwood at 12:32 PM on September 12, 2023 [11 favorites]
Indeed, Twitter could be a hell-hole of harassment and bigotry and bot-attacks even pre-Musk
Any online place without moderation will do that.
Musk is doing a fine job of wrecking Twitter and there is no reasonable way to make a place "safe for advertisers" and run without moderation. For Musk to not use his own money to keep Twitter he needs those advertisers. Musk's fancy AI chips might be able to moderate at scale but that means taking assets from a publicly traded firm and apply them to a private vanity project with all the possible lawsuits from doing that. If Musk sues the ADL over advertising loss the LOLs and seeing the sausage being made will be epic.
At least at BlueSky they publish who's being blocked so you can opt to follow the crowd and block toxic nasty people before you run into them AND it provides social proof that your personal choice of finding someone a public bozo was the right move.
As for Mastadon 'not ready for prime time' - meh. Code evolves and the place isn't Twitter or The Facebook or ..... Just accept it for what it is.
posted by rough ashlar at 1:00 PM on September 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
Any online place without moderation will do that.
Musk is doing a fine job of wrecking Twitter and there is no reasonable way to make a place "safe for advertisers" and run without moderation. For Musk to not use his own money to keep Twitter he needs those advertisers. Musk's fancy AI chips might be able to moderate at scale but that means taking assets from a publicly traded firm and apply them to a private vanity project with all the possible lawsuits from doing that. If Musk sues the ADL over advertising loss the LOLs and seeing the sausage being made will be epic.
At least at BlueSky they publish who's being blocked so you can opt to follow the crowd and block toxic nasty people before you run into them AND it provides social proof that your personal choice of finding someone a public bozo was the right move.
As for Mastadon 'not ready for prime time' - meh. Code evolves and the place isn't Twitter or The Facebook or ..... Just accept it for what it is.
posted by rough ashlar at 1:00 PM on September 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
“Independent journalism” here is kind of conflating “freelance journalist” with “news paper|station|site independent of conglomerate capital”. The latter were killed and eaten first, and some freelancers survived in the wreckage.
The way I'd put it is that media consolidation and the death of the newsroom converted journalism into precarious labour, and writers have been trying to survive the new gig economy by building their personal brand on social media. Some of them made it work for a while, but the situation was never stable, and it never will be until the underlying economic structure of the industry changes.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 1:28 PM on September 12, 2023 [14 favorites]
The way I'd put it is that media consolidation and the death of the newsroom converted journalism into precarious labour, and writers have been trying to survive the new gig economy by building their personal brand on social media. Some of them made it work for a while, but the situation was never stable, and it never will be until the underlying economic structure of the industry changes.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 1:28 PM on September 12, 2023 [14 favorites]
I used Twitter as a news aggregator and I loved it. I never read comments, I never commented, and somehow was able to sidestep all of the bad Twitter (it wasn't hard). Thanks for this post. I miss Twitter 1.0 and I despise Elon Musk. good people worked at Twitter who had good values.
posted by bluesky43 at 2:53 PM on September 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by bluesky43 at 2:53 PM on September 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
USENET, the OG social network, rises again like a text-only phoenix
posted by Artw at 4:23 PM on September 12, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by Artw at 4:23 PM on September 12, 2023 [12 favorites]
Maybe the resurgence of rec.crafts.brewing will be the impetus I need to get back into brewing!
posted by mollweide at 5:52 PM on September 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by mollweide at 5:52 PM on September 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
I do think that BlueSky is on its way to becoming a fairly straightforward and uncontroversial New Twitter. The only complaint this essay makes is that it doesn't have the numbers yet, but it did just hit a million users today. Literally all of the people Grimes is quoting here are on it.
Aaaand this is perhaps as good a place as any to mention that I've got invites, if anybody is still looking for them. You could send me a bluemail.
posted by anhedonic at 8:25 PM on September 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
Aaaand this is perhaps as good a place as any to mention that I've got invites, if anybody is still looking for them. You could send me a bluemail.
posted by anhedonic at 8:25 PM on September 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
Ditto. I’ve mainly been trying to give them to comics people, but I’m running out of takers.
Plus if anyone needs an invite to a very chill Mastodon Instance for science fiction and writing I have a wandering.shop invite code.
posted by Artw at 8:31 PM on September 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
Plus if anyone needs an invite to a very chill Mastodon Instance for science fiction and writing I have a wandering.shop invite code.
posted by Artw at 8:31 PM on September 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
Twitters inherent centralisation always made the platform problematic. People are far too willing to trust singular corporations with their socials. Corporate commons are a mirage.
posted by neonamber at 12:45 AM on September 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by neonamber at 12:45 AM on September 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
Or, as drewtoothpaste.bsky.social said: “‘why would you use that site? don’t you know it’s financed by someone evil?’ yeah well i made my own websites and you all stopped going to websites so i have to use the evil ones you like instead of my own.”posted by zamboni at 12:54 PM on September 13, 2023 [8 favorites]
Trump Attacked Me. Then Musk Did. It Wasn’t an Accident.
Private individuals — from academic researchers to employees of tech companies — are increasingly the targets of lawsuits, congressional hearings and vicious online attacks. These efforts, staged largely by the right, are having their desired effect: Universities are cutting back on efforts to quantify abusive and misleading information spreading online. Social media companies are shying away from making the kind of difficult decisions my team did when we intervened against Mr. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. Platforms had finally begun taking these risks seriously only after the 2016 election. Now, faced with the prospect of disproportionate attacks on their employees, companies seem increasingly reluctant to make controversial decisions, letting misinformation and abuse fester in order to avoid provoking public retaliation.
These attacks on internet safety and security come at a moment when the stakes for democracy could not be higher. More than 40 major elections are scheduled to take place in 2024, including in the United States, the European Union, India, Ghana and Mexico. These democracies will most likely face the same risks of government-backed disinformation campaigns and online incitement of violence that have plagued social media for years. We should be worried about what happens next.
posted by Artw at 8:27 AM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
Private individuals — from academic researchers to employees of tech companies — are increasingly the targets of lawsuits, congressional hearings and vicious online attacks. These efforts, staged largely by the right, are having their desired effect: Universities are cutting back on efforts to quantify abusive and misleading information spreading online. Social media companies are shying away from making the kind of difficult decisions my team did when we intervened against Mr. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. Platforms had finally begun taking these risks seriously only after the 2016 election. Now, faced with the prospect of disproportionate attacks on their employees, companies seem increasingly reluctant to make controversial decisions, letting misinformation and abuse fester in order to avoid provoking public retaliation.
These attacks on internet safety and security come at a moment when the stakes for democracy could not be higher. More than 40 major elections are scheduled to take place in 2024, including in the United States, the European Union, India, Ghana and Mexico. These democracies will most likely face the same risks of government-backed disinformation campaigns and online incitement of violence that have plagued social media for years. We should be worried about what happens next.
posted by Artw at 8:27 AM on September 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
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And it does a good job of explaining why Twitter matters as a social media platform, why its would be successors aren't able to replace it, and why "just move" isn't actually an answer for what's happened.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:48 AM on September 12, 2023 [9 favorites]