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solon_kittenI ended up seeing a post from Erin Kissane come across my feeds, titled "Mastodon is easy and fun except when it isn't", and wow... Please go read the original post before continuing. It's hits very close to home for me, and actually has a bit of strange timing to it. I was going to post something similar from my own point of view, but when I read Erin's post, I wanted to give it a proper reply, so I scrapped my original rant in favor of this more thought-out post
Right off the bat, she mentions that "...an open-source guy repeatedly scoffed at the idea of being able to learn anything useful from people on other, less ideologically correct networks..." in one of the conversations she had regarding another very well-written piece on her blog. I've been seeing this very sentiment growing among certain people on the Fediverse, and strangely enough, I recognize it from another topic as well: some members of the FOSS community talking about Apple and Microsoft users. As someone who ran Linux as a daily driver for over a decade, I both saw, and sadly participated, in that very mentality at more than a few points in my life, and it's part of why I ended up leaving the Linux community.
But what really got me was the very first—and apparently most common—reason for people leaving the Fediverse:
I can say that, yep, this made me leave the Fediverse four times. One of those times, I was made unwelcome just because I ran my own Pleroma instance, and a number of admins defederated with me for that reason alone. Those admins owned instances with people I actually wanted to watch, so it kinda just made running jos.prismdragon.net (now gone) more trouble than it was worth. I was just too limited on who I could interact with that fit in my niches.
Of the other three times, it's just always been a general feeling of walking on eggshells whenever I post something that might even vaguely be considered controversial, or some form of a "hot take". This is especially strong surrounding content warnings (CWs, or the "Subject" field for some ActivityPub services). Thanks to some rather nasty interactions in the past, I started CWing pretty much everything. Even mundane things like talking about tech stuff goes behind a CW, just because I got tired of being slammed for not knowing I needed to cover something up for one reason or another.
The sad thing is that, many of the same people who complain about things not being behind a CW will often boost political stuff that isn't marked with one, even though many people are affected by that sort of thing. I've complained many times about it being nearly impossible to filter things out because of this, and it's another reason behind my repeated abandonment of the Fediverse. It's frustrating, being told that it's easier to hide those things from view, only to feel like you've been lied to.
Next up, I want to mention an excerpt that was provided:
Here's the thing... That was actually considered a feature at one point. A feature that many users actively demanded, as it supposedly helped to keep malicious people from finding vulnerable users to target. I'd provide links to posts about the subject, but they're extremely old, and there's no full-text search, so that's a near impossible task with the tools that I know about. I mean, I've been trying to recall information about the failed attempt to hard-fork Mastodon that was caused around that same time, but I can't really find anything from that part of the Fediverse's history.
Imagine being told that you need to "provide proof" to something, but being unable to find it without spending hours looking through posts, and hoping that it still shows up in the profile pane of the user you were certain had posted or boosted the content in question. Assuming that, in the intervening time, they hadn't been blocked on the server level, or their server silenced/suspended by the instance you're part of.
I consider myself lucky to have found an instance with an amazingly chill owner and mod team. Looking at what's been going on with Mastodon.Art's ban on using the shortened form of GNU Image Manipulation Program, and the hair-trigger they have toward anyone outside of their own instance who breaks their rule on the subject, tells me that things aren't as easy for others, and I feel for them. As a person who's had to watch people endure abuse from mods/admins in nearly the exact same way, it's almost triggering when I have to watch it happen again, but be unable to speak up about it because it could get the target put on me, or worse, get the server I'm on defederated from what amounts to a giant bully instance.
The irony is... As much as I want to post a link to this on the Fediverse, I don't feel like painting a target on my back by doing so. I've been part of social media long enough to know that, the more you put yourself out there, the bigger the inevitable backlash. I worry about getting my chosen instance in trouble for speaking out about the flaws in the Fediverse, and it's just not something I'm willing to do myself.
I won't stop anyone else from linking to this post, and I've turned on comment screening just for safety's sake. But I can't bring myself to do so.
As I've said elsewhere, I'm just not really comfortable being on the Fediverse. But I use it for the same reason I begrudgingly use Discord and Telegram: because I kinda have to in order to keep up with others and socialize these days. It's just how the world is.
Right off the bat, she mentions that "...an open-source guy repeatedly scoffed at the idea of being able to learn anything useful from people on other, less ideologically correct networks..." in one of the conversations she had regarding another very well-written piece on her blog. I've been seeing this very sentiment growing among certain people on the Fediverse, and strangely enough, I recognize it from another topic as well: some members of the FOSS community talking about Apple and Microsoft users. As someone who ran Linux as a daily driver for over a decade, I both saw, and sadly participated, in that very mentality at more than a few points in my life, and it's part of why I ended up leaving the Linux community.
But what really got me was the very first—and apparently most common—reason for people leaving the Fediverse:
The most common—but usually not the only—response, cited as a primary or secondary reason in about 75 replies—had to do with feeling unwelcome, being scolded, and getting lectured. Some people mentioned that they tried Mastodon during a rush of people out of Twitter and got what they perceived as a hostile response.
I can say that, yep, this made me leave the Fediverse four times. One of those times, I was made unwelcome just because I ran my own Pleroma instance, and a number of admins defederated with me for that reason alone. Those admins owned instances with people I actually wanted to watch, so it kinda just made running jos.prismdragon.net (now gone) more trouble than it was worth. I was just too limited on who I could interact with that fit in my niches.
Of the other three times, it's just always been a general feeling of walking on eggshells whenever I post something that might even vaguely be considered controversial, or some form of a "hot take". This is especially strong surrounding content warnings (CWs, or the "Subject" field for some ActivityPub services). Thanks to some rather nasty interactions in the past, I started CWing pretty much everything. Even mundane things like talking about tech stuff goes behind a CW, just because I got tired of being slammed for not knowing I needed to cover something up for one reason or another.
The sad thing is that, many of the same people who complain about things not being behind a CW will often boost political stuff that isn't marked with one, even though many people are affected by that sort of thing. I've complained many times about it being nearly impossible to filter things out because of this, and it's another reason behind my repeated abandonment of the Fediverse. It's frustrating, being told that it's easier to hide those things from view, only to feel like you've been lied to.
Next up, I want to mention an excerpt that was provided:
For me, it was that Mastodon seemed to actively discourage discoverability. One of the things I loved most about Twitter was the way it could throw things in front of me that I never would have even thought to go look for on my own.
Here's the thing... That was actually considered a feature at one point. A feature that many users actively demanded, as it supposedly helped to keep malicious people from finding vulnerable users to target. I'd provide links to posts about the subject, but they're extremely old, and there's no full-text search, so that's a near impossible task with the tools that I know about. I mean, I've been trying to recall information about the failed attempt to hard-fork Mastodon that was caused around that same time, but I can't really find anything from that part of the Fediverse's history.
Imagine being told that you need to "provide proof" to something, but being unable to find it without spending hours looking through posts, and hoping that it still shows up in the profile pane of the user you were certain had posted or boosted the content in question. Assuming that, in the intervening time, they hadn't been blocked on the server level, or their server silenced/suspended by the instance you're part of.
I consider myself lucky to have found an instance with an amazingly chill owner and mod team. Looking at what's been going on with Mastodon.Art's ban on using the shortened form of GNU Image Manipulation Program, and the hair-trigger they have toward anyone outside of their own instance who breaks their rule on the subject, tells me that things aren't as easy for others, and I feel for them. As a person who's had to watch people endure abuse from mods/admins in nearly the exact same way, it's almost triggering when I have to watch it happen again, but be unable to speak up about it because it could get the target put on me, or worse, get the server I'm on defederated from what amounts to a giant bully instance.
The irony is... As much as I want to post a link to this on the Fediverse, I don't feel like painting a target on my back by doing so. I've been part of social media long enough to know that, the more you put yourself out there, the bigger the inevitable backlash. I worry about getting my chosen instance in trouble for speaking out about the flaws in the Fediverse, and it's just not something I'm willing to do myself.
I won't stop anyone else from linking to this post, and I've turned on comment screening just for safety's sake. But I can't bring myself to do so.
As I've said elsewhere, I'm just not really comfortable being on the Fediverse. But I use it for the same reason I begrudgingly use Discord and Telegram: because I kinda have to in order to keep up with others and socialize these days. It's just how the world is.
