- cross-posted to:
- fediverse@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- fediverse@lemmy.ml
Hey there! Figured I’d share here since my main instance, Lemmy.ml, seems to be really broken right now. I published an article today focusing on some of the myths and misconceptions Mastodon users have spread over the last few years, with some critical analysis and debunking.
Let me know if you like it!
You must log in or register to comment.
Strong disagree about the email thing. When people say that, they aren’t talking about low level implementation details like this article goes into. They’re talking about the ability for Gmail to talk to AOL.
Non-technical users have no idea about implementation details of email anyway, so I highly doubt anyone has ever interpreted it that way.
As someone who struggled to understand what the fediverse even was, the email analogy was what made it finally click for me.
For me, it was pretty clear that the analogy was only about how different servers could talk to each other, and that the underlying technology wasn’t equivalent. I never even considered that people might use the analogy that way until this article.
Ahh! So that is why users are user@instance.name. it is basically like public email threads that are structured to promote discussion!
Aw, I thought this was about actual Mastodons.
Meee tooo, hard disappoint. I was thrilled there were a whopping 10 misconceptions about the extinct animal!
One misconception is that mastodons sharpened their tusk points with a nail file while giving their enemy the evil eye. Never happened.
There’s a sweet misconception being cleared up, that’s the stuff, thank you stranger!
Why would you expect that from a fediverse community post?
I blame the thumbnail, though.
Edit: or maybe I can’t take a joke…
Same here, as the picture led us to believe.
I’m glad I’m not the only one disappointed.
We want real mastodon facts, damn it.
I came ready to learn about prehistoric animals, what’s going on here.
A few of these are interesting and accurate (email comparisons), a few are pretty obvious and widely distributed already (privacy challenges), a few are a bit of a straw man argument (not sure “algorithms are bad” is a thing) and a few I’d caveat a little bit (quote tweets).
Going through all that would mean a whole response piece, though, so I’m more than happy to vaguely nod and move on.
It’s gotten diluted over time with each wave, but algorithms are bad was a strong stance on mastodon servers since its inception. It was one of the first “big” things touted about mastodon. Each wave brought more people from twitter that didn’t care about that or actively disagreed with it so you don’t see the argument as much
Well, the idea of the original post is that ALL algorithms used for any reason are bad, and the retort is to explain that a chonological feed is still a (simple) algorithm and use that to “well actually” a distinction with proprietary algorithms.
Which is fine, but nitpicky. I’d think most Masto users get that, or at least take no issue with the obvious explanation. For all I saw the majority of the response to BlueSky’s idea of an algorithm marketplace where you pick and tune how your feeds are sorted was relatively well received.
But as always around here I don’t doubt that with a different set of follows and even usage times the pushback on principle may be more frequent or obvious. It just hasn’t been my experience and I think the “what algorithm actually means” bit is a bit deceptive.
Yep. When I tried Mastodon, I gave up again super fast, and I think I see why now. Thankyou, very interesting.
I agree with the email metaphor being a bad example. If you’re talking to a twitter user, it’s easier to describe it as a platform where anyone can set up their own twitter website and you can sign up with any of them and see content from the other sites. Then just switch it up to whatever they’re familiar with (i.e. reddit, discord, etc.). I don’t know why people like using email as an example.
Yep. Terrible analogy, a bad fit for both the tech and the use cases, tells nothing to anybody, and federation is not the biggest feature most people care about going into Mastodon anyway.
is comparing to real country better
You forgot censorship. The top default instance social is heavily censored.
