this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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I for one value the minor barrier to entry. Mastodon quality degraded greatly with Twitter migrants. Just take a look at bluesky or threads - the content quality is not even close to that of Mastodon despite being projects in similar market position.
I know it sounds mean and there has to be a "better way" but a bit of friction goes a long way. If you're too dumb to figure out Mastodon you're too dumb for the internet - there I said it.
There can be nice people who are bad at tech, just like there's racist technologists
Just because a group of nice well meaning Lemmy users is willing to suffer the pain of a poorly built app doesn't mean they should /have/ to suffer through it
It's sometimes nice to make nice things. Don't be too much of an HOA, they're new, it's not the end of the world.
Just because I'm not afraid of biking with cars, doesn't mean I don't recognize that American biking infrastructure is hostile. We could do more to make biking safer and easier. They'll struggle but they'll get the hang of it.
So too, with making nice apps to free the lay people from their digital walled gardens.
Mastodon nowawdays is absurdly easy to sign up for, too. The official app (the way most newbies will find it) defaults to mastodon.social, and users never have to deal with anything involving Federation. From the user's perspective the "Mastodon" app is identical to the official Twitter or Reddit app etc.
It absolutely boggles my mind how there are still real live technology journalists that claim it's "too confusing". Like yes "instances" and Federation is def weird, but not knowing how the technical backend stuff works doesn't detract from the experience in the slightest.
Yes, the old Internet was absolutely full of good-natured, kind, helpful people.
It wasn't until my boomer grandchildren got hold of Facebook that I got tricked into rm -rf, and called dirty words for believing a stranger
... Luckily I use Windows so it didn't hurt me.
Now I use Hurd, btw
I agree. It looks me time to know how mastodon works. But, it's how it maintain the quality. You can't have quality and quantity in a social media.
I actually disagree with that. It’s theoretically possible to have quality and quantity at the same time. But to do so, it can’t be based on an engagement algorithm, because engagement typically correlates with low quality posts.
This is why you’ll never see quality and quantity together from a profit-seeking platform - they are incentivized to shovel you low quality stuff that’s highly engaging.
Algorithms doesn't change much. Back in the days when we used mostly forums, and chats, and... all without algorithms, we had the same trend with quality and quantity. The quality went lower with the number of people using them. The small niche forum maintained the quality and for some are still up. The biggest quickly shrink.
The same applied to the first social media and the newer.
An algorithm that prioritizes quality (instead of engagement) DOES change it though. Let’s not pretend that all algorithms are the same.
But if we don't, how can we act superior to people who use algorithm based platforms? /s
You're pretending what not the same as facts. I can pretend a lot. It's how I built general statement fitting the majority.
In fact, it doesn't work like this. Whatever you use, the quality shrink with the quantity. You will have an equilibrium at some point but even with algorithms targeting quality, it will shrink.
The algorithms will continually serve something, low are high quality doesn't matter. If I use an algorithm priorizing high quality content on a poop emoji platform, it will give me poop emoji. What's matter the most is what is posted. And, you can't control the quality of the post.
It's how mainstream algorithm based social medias actually work. You have farms of content adapting themselves at each algorithm change.
So, it's why the quality depends of how difficult it's to use the social media.
I think you’re confusing what the word “algorithm” means. It could be literally anything! You could even write an algorithm that serves you the single most interesting, high quality, perfectly relevant piece of information found on the internet that day.
Yes obviously mainstream algorithms are designed like you said. But there’s no reason why they have to operate like that.