possibly spicy take, Twitter migration meta
I still feel that Twitter's fiery death and the subsequent migration of folks to fedi has, on the whole, done more harm than good to the fediverse.
The problem isn't even the amount of people, or their background - the problem is the *timing*. A large mass of people who didn't really *want* fedi, but who were searching for a 'new Twitter' and this was the only option available to them, for one reason or another.
They never had the time to lurk around and explore the community before getting involved in it; or the time to understand the dynamics here at their own speed. Because the Other Place was on fire and they had to move their social venue ASAP.
This caused a lot of disregard for the existing community dynamics, and that combined plus the volume caused tensions with existing users.
In this context, the reasons that people give for moving to Bluesky (https://mas.to/@kissane/110793942888550843) don't remotely surprise me. Many people are *still* looking for a 'new Twitter', and Bluesky is much closer to that.
I think that's important to keep in mind when evaluating those reasons: they should not necessarily be seen as 'problems with fedi', so much as 'reasons why fedi is not suitable as a drop-in Twitter alternative'.
That doesn't automatically make people *wrong* for having those problems with fedi, either. But the answer may very possibly be "fedi is not Twitter, and this community just isn't a good fit for you." It doesn't *need* to be for everybody.
(I would also be remiss not to mention the corrosive role of the press and Gargron in this; both severely misrepresented what fedi is. For different reasons, but it has caused a lot of people to feel like they didn't get what they were promised.)
re: possibly spicy take, Twitter migration meta
@joepie91 honestly, I think these are fair insights to make. I in no way think the fediverse is "perfect" or even a "Twitter alternative". It's easy for me to see at least that if you're looking for something like Twitter, this isn't it.
I can *definitely* also understand wanting better discoverability and ways to follow folks, but for the users like me that rely on instance blocks that can be difficult to balance.
re: possibly spicy take, Twitter migration meta
@joepie91 Either way, I do think there needs to be better instruction given, but I do also think there's something to be said about how the fediverse as a whole is advertised (as previously stated). It's kind of a complex issue.
re: possibly spicy take, Twitter migration meta
@joepie91 The degree to which the media has outright sabotaged the fediverse is incredible to watch, straight through to lying about what the CSAM study said (which is a big problem to be fair, but not the *kind* of problem that media represented it as, nor one specific to fedi). I have friends now that won't join because of that.
possibly spicy take, Twitter migration meta
@joepie91 I think this is a reasonable take, on the whole. An additional factor that might have played into the dynamics is that when a whole bunch of people arrived basically at once, they largely interacted with *each other*. So, their impressions were shaped not by the existing users (with both the good and the bad things those would bring), but by the other people who just showed up. Hence there was a noticeable amount of "nobody on Mastodon does X" when really people on Mastodon had been doing X for years.
possibly spicy take, Twitter migration meta
@joepie91 Also, the fact that the migration came from *Twitter* of all places was particularly harsh, since for years Twitter has been bringing out the worst in people.
possibly spicy take, Twitter migration meta
@joepie91 turns out you can force the people out of twitter but you can't force the twitter out of people.
What they want didn't change, only what they had.
possibly spicy take, Twitter migration meta
@joepie91 and Eugen ‘Growth’ Gargron, whose ego is entangled with making mastodon (well, mostly just m.s) bigger forever, was exactly the sort of wannabe CEO tech ‘entrepreneur’ type that the media were salivating for, regardless that fedi doesn’t actually work that way.
possibly spicy take, Twitter migration meta
Interesting, yeah. I'm curious about the "misrepresented what fedi is"; what's the gist of the wrong idea that people got, do you think?
re: possibly spicy take, Twitter migration meta
@unchartedworlds Both presented it as "the Twitter killer", implying that it was a drop-in alternative; Gargron for ego reasons, press because (as usual) they couldn't be bothered to try and understand something outside of the reference frame of the status quo.
So people came to fedi expecting to be able to take Twitter culture, Twitter habits, and for the platform to work like Twitter and have the content of Twitter. None of which were true.
@joepie91 Aaah that makes sense, yeah. Thanks for explaining :-)
Re: possibly spicy take, Twitter migration meta
@joepie91 I guess maybe I’m just “too Twitter” because even tho I’ve been on Mastodon for, like, 7 years or w/e, I found myself resonating a lot with those suggestions
re: possibly spicy take, Twitter migration meta
(For the avoidance of any doubt, this is specifically about the "this is too hard and people expect too much consideration of me" complaints)