you see, what upsets me about fediverse is that despite the lack of algorithm, what “does well” on fediverse is still the same things that do well under algorithmic feeds, because people already got trained out of actually reading long posts en masse

@twinkle I don’t think that’s true at all, the type of things you see on the fediverse are in my opinion very different from the things you see on centralized social media with proprietary recommendation algorithms.

Sure some people here might have attention span brainrot, but so far the fediverse is pretty much free of corpo pandering, self-censorship to appeal to algorithm, or MrBeast type celebrities who become popular by making engagement bait.

@twinkle get a better timeline

@wertimer @twinkle getting a better timeline would involve following nazis and bigots therefore he cannot allow that

@lina @twinkle

>pronouns mouse/it/they

you may be on to something

@wertimer @twinkle online physiognomy is real

@SuperDicq@minidisc.tokyo @twinkle@sweet.succubi.services I think the problem is the desire of posts to "do well" in the first place. Posts don't have to "do well", you only have to post them. This constant desire to be the most popular person in a room is harmful to the mind. Just try to have a good time, and if it interests other people, that's just a bonus.

@SuperDicq well, that’s not what i see, and i was posting about my experiences.

@SuperDicq and, hell, i would go as far as to say that what you said was rather hypocritical. scrolling down your posts, there’s a ton of reposted memes. no contexts, no meaning, just random memes. and i dont mean that as a personal fault, again I’m commenting on a social structure thing, not an individual problem thing.

maybe you thought of something different from what i meant. when i said “what does well” i dont mean paying the platform to boost your posts or ragebaits/engagement baits or self-censorship, i meant a more fundamental breaking down of social media as media for socialisation. “doing well” is in quotes for a reason, when i post about my thoughts i dont want people to have it blow up or reach hundreds of people or whatever. when i post i just want people to read it and comment on it. this doesn’t happen very often, because people often would rather look at a shorter post or a meme instead and click the “boost” button. and I’m also commenting on the whole concept of wanting posts to “do well”.

i wasn’t comparing fedi to Twitter, i was comparing it to Tumblr, or Bluesky, Facebook, etc. because i never used Twitter you see. and the thing is that like, despite the lack of an algorithm there is only a very slight increase of genuine interactions that i receive / that people exchange back from my own interactions. and maybe this is more of a fault of how fedi softwares are designed.

@tyil @SuperDicq unfortunately i dont think this is a personal issue. see, i dont care about my posts “doing well”, but i cannot police others into, that. i can’t tell my friends “hey stop posting memes” or “hey stop boosting what i post instead of actually commenting on it”, i can unfollow them sure or block them or mute the thread but there comes a point where you realise that this just isn’t an issue with the person, this is a systematic issue and one that no new niche social media platforms want to solve because they know that people want this kind of socialisation. they want likes and reposts and quotes and reactions and all that juicy stuff Facebook invented and then said “people were mad about this, but engagement doubled!”. simply going “just don’t then” is not a real solution to something that you can’t solve with individualistic means.

@twinkle Oh yeah I do post a lot of low effort stuff on my Misskey. This account is essentially a dumping ground where everything goes for anything that I find interesting.

I do actually make stuff but that’s on my Peertubes, my personal website and and Owncast streams.

I don’t know if it the fault of how this software is designed, or how I choose to interact with it.

The main point still stands though, I don’t really post stuff because I want to farm as much interactions as possible. It is more for social reasons like finding people who share my interests and sharing things with them.

@SuperDicq oh i mean yeah, i post my writings on my writings site, i have long form blogs/essays lined up too and i draw for my own good too. but also, it would be nice to be able to share this kind of things and have my friends actually look at it instead of just hitting the boost button like they see a cute art, you know? and that’s not something that any one person staying vigilant can change. though i equally don’t know if simply changing the software would do anything, since if people don’t like it, they won’t use it.

@twinkle I'd definitely compare my fedi experience to tumblr more than twitter, in regards to culture vs function (it's certainly more twitter in that regard). Where most of the socialisation is quoting posts in order to make a joke to add onto a seriousTM subject that could maybe use or not use some padding out. Tumblr users also didn't really aim to have posts "do well" but you knew on some level which ones would or wouldn't. Tagging meta to boost/avoid things better.

Fedi just allows you to manually choose if something can potentially escape containment or not... Which is a pro and con, the coolest or most unique to someone stuff is absolutely hidden behind "followers only" and if someone is trained enough by mainstream algorithms and social media cultures, they're only publicly posting what's safe (even if not intended to pop off). I am no exception.