Hi there. In these times, folks are becoming more aware on how the social media companies are tracking their activity online, and selling the data for AI training purposes. They’re getting tired of being sold to third parties as a product, instead of being the customers or users of these platforms.
Sadly, Mastodon is losing its chance to become a real alternative to this business model. Why? Because the majority of users, me included, are no less sick and tired of online radical politics, regardless of orientation, being forced 24/7 upon them. They just want a friendly conversation on life, job and hobby topics… and perhaps also opt-in from time to time on the denser subjects of social and political issues. Mastodon claims to be ad-free… but in fact, the majority of contents over there can still be considered political ads disguised as personal takes.
An example: I went to instances.social, picked up spanish language… users and content were just the default. And this was the very first entry coming out:
“Todon.nl is een radicaal linkse anti-autoritaire Mastodonserver. Wij verwelkomen anarchisten, socialisten, (klimaat)activisten, LHBTQIA±personen, milieubewuste mensen, intersectionelen, antiracisten, antifascisten, antikapitalisten, veganisten, piraten, mensenrechtenactivisten, enz. Als ze maar radicaal, links én anti-autoritair zijn”.
The default instance on most of the Mastodon apps for the phone, is equally focused on radical politics in the feed, and its not reflective of the interests of the general public as a whole, but rather alienating. This is a boon to Zuckerberg and Musk… not to the majority of users, open source, or internet privacy. It is not surprising, given this fact, that Mastodon moderators have repeatedly tended to ban the users for the most perplexing reasons (likely because of not being politically radical enough). Regardless, not the way an alternative to the mainstream social media should ever be.
Everybody should be able to enjoy a conversation in a wide array of controversial topics if they desire to, but users should be able to opt-in, not being forced-in. Unless this changes, so that Mastodon becomes a truly welcoming site (even for the people who’re sick of ideology being fed into their throats, which are many), there’s no chance for it to become the alternative to commercial social media that it aims to be.
I think you are talking about the onboarding experience, which has always been miserable. The mastodon enthusiasts doesn’t care because they already have the people they follow.
Didn’t bother reading the whole thing.
The underlying misunderstanding of anyone who looks at anything Fediverse, not just Mastodon, is that it’s like any of the centralized options. It’s not.
Yes, you can connect and follow other people on other serves, yes their political ideas, no matter how extreme, will be there. But it’s no different than X/Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, or anywhere else in that regard.
Where it is different is that it’s something you or I can use to build our own community with our own ideas and leanings, and connect with or disassociate from those we don’t want to.
Its a more interconnected version of the old Forum softwares, or Content Management System blogs like WordPress or Drupal.
No. When you pick up the default or official instance from the phone app, you expect a bit of everything but not, in any case, a political room. Why was I directed to a radical Mastodon instance in the index? If I changed no settings, just went with the default.
I have studies in social sciences, talked to sociologists, anthropologists… if this dose of politics on Mastodon is making me gag, I can only imagine the reaction of average people, who will make their minds about it from the first impression and default settings. Sorry, but sometimes less is more.
Because it is one of the most popular ones with your search criteria?
IT is really not a difficult question.
Another issue of course is that people who are used to commercial social media think Mastodon has a “need to take off”. Mastodon did fine with 80 000 total users, it does not need to make a profit. The whole idea of “be popular or die” is such a capitalist concept.
The whole idea of “be popular or die” is such a capitalist concept.
Too radical political opinion for OP probably :D
“Show me on the doll where the woke mind virus hurt you”
So choose a different instance and/or follow different people???
Your social experience will be entirely what you make of it, that’s part of the point of Mastodon. No algorithms, very little ‘suggested users’ outside of trying to help people build their initial feed.
To get the timeline that you want, try looking for a few hashtags you’re interested in. Follow and interact with those people.
Finally, each instance has their own moderators and own rules. There is no central or ‘parent’ set of moderation who manage anything. But usually, if someone gets banned from most instances, it’s for stuff like hate speech or harassment.
I think viewing Mastodon the software through this lens is the wrong approach. the real special sauce is the ActivityPub protocol.
The protocol was given a well informed comment in the Thoughtworks Radar a few months ago (assess means check it out):
With the current upheaval in the micro-blogging platform space, the ActivityPub protocol is gaining prominence. ActivityPub is an open protocol for sharing information such as posts, publications and dates. It can be used to implement a social media platform, but the key benefit is that it delivers interoperability between different social media platforms. We expect ActivityPub will play a significant role in this space, but we’re mentioning it here because we’re intrigued by the possibilities beyond the obvious use cases in social media. An example is ActivityPub support for merge requests, recently proposed for GitLab.
I think my server descriptions says something similar. And I’d say I get overwhelmed by too much political content quite quickly. My home timeline (people I follow and their boosts) is fine though. If I don‘t want to read something, filter keywords, mute, unfollow, worst case block the user. It‘s my timeline and on Mastodon I can control the content in it pretty good. If I‘m up to it, I scroll through the local or federated timelines. But if I‘m not, I just don’t. I can’t control what other people post but I can control what is displayed to me.
And in the end, the general answer to not liking posts on mastodon (after the steps I wrote above) is switching instances.
People read stuff other than their home timeline?
It sounds like Xitter politics would be more up your alley, so just use that then.
Your comment kind of proves my point. But Xitter, as you say, is not free. I pay it with my personal data, and as I said, I’m not ok with that, because its not honest or moral. Mastodon on the other hand, isn’t free either… because its seemingly sponsored or held together by radical politics (which aren’t money-less, since it receives funding for promotion purposes… not to mention the personal benefit/enjoyment of the organizers).
If Mastodon goal is solely to be a political platform, then there’s nothing to argue and you’d be right. But the project doesn’t present itself like that, instead as a decentralized platform open to everybody, which protects our privacy and its free to use. Politics is never mentioned, so I feel that my critique is grounded.
If you care so much about the principles of software freedom, then you are quite political yourself. I don’t see why you’d have a problem with something like Anarchism in that case. Maybe you just aren’t familiar with what philosophies like Anarchism are really about.
Mastodon is not an organization that controls what anyone posts. If you’re a free software aficionado, you should know that. People will post what they like, it’s up to you to choose who to follow and curate your own feed.
You say that like it’s a bad thing 😂
If only you had a slightly more even handed political discussion in Mastodon; I guess its understandable to not allow the hard right in, because of typical moderation policies regarding discrimination. But seeking among Mastodon instances, you find no moderate right, or center right servers. Zero. In fact, you find no political center servers at all. And if we try to search for even one reformist or democratic left server, in any human language, we won’t find a single place out there. Not one. So all this talk about Mastodon being “open” to all, or just a matter of ignorance about system settings, is frankly insulting or hypocritic. If we’re going to talk politics, and the topic can’t be avoided, at least be open to other trends that don’t pressume to know what’s “better” for the majority of the people, than what the people itself chooses in election day.
Who is “forcing” anything on you? It’s Mastodon, there’s no algorithm. If you don’t like someone’s toots, don’t follow them?
I have said it before, and I say it again: It is the default experience of newcomers not following anything, its simply what’s by default in the feed. Honestly, would you accept an answer like this, if the feed for every newcomer was full of anti immigration toots or pro-police commentary instead? Bet you’d feel unconfortable, thinking that stuff doesn’t fit with the expectations of average users. You’d be right. But you’re ok with things as they are now, only because you perceive them as favoring your own bias. And, seems to me that politics are more important to you than seeing this platform grow by bringing people in. You see it merely as a means to an end, instead of an end by itself.
I don’t know man, if I don’t follow anyone then I don’t see anything in my feed at all. And that’s great.
Well, I know how Mastodon works, so if my feed was full of nazis I’d say “hmm, I think this is not the Mastodon server for me, and I need to reconsider who I’m following”.
And if you don’t know how Mastodon works, that’s fine! And I understand that that’s frustrating, but it’s not Mastodon’s fault.
You’ve basically walked into a library, picked up the first random book you saw, didn’t like what was in it, and are now saying that libraries need to change how they work.
Do some research on how Mastodon works and how you can improve your experience before criticising it.
Since Mastodon doesn’t have an algorithmic feed, it’s up to each of us to make the most of our interactions. That’s priceless. (Although I get that radical politics as the first thing a new user sees can turn they off.)
What matters is not whether or not mastodon takes off. What matters is whether or not Fediverse takes off
Now as far as your political experience, I can say my last two instances have had very little to no political content. My current instance is my own, and we outright do not allow political shit lol
But even when I was on mastodon.social, I did not have lots of political content, I wonder who you followed or what hashtags you followed that were politically influenced?
Are there political servers? YES! Just as much as theres servers about cats, coffee, reading, art… There’s servers for anything, this is WHY you pick a server, you have the freedom to be part of a community of your choice and filter out junk you dont care about!
I promise you politics exist on every single social network.
Mastodon’s home feed does not show you something you did not follow (unless someone you follow boosts it)
And even then, the filters feature is dope AF, I have a filter for common political terms, and youtube/twitch links cause I dont really care for peoples live notificationsMy experience is very curated, and very in line with what I want to see 👍
Then join a more general server. There are literally tons of small general servers. Join one where they’re friendly. If you want to look “under the hood” before joining there are apps like ice cubes that lets you look at the local feed of each server. That way you can see who’s posting.
Man came to his doctor and said “Doctor, it hurts when I do this”.
Doctor said “don’t do this”.
Don’t join instances you’re not comfortable being on. Don’t follow accounts or hashtags or feeds that are regularly posting content you’re not interested in.
Guess what: a lot of people want to talk politics, including (for some) radical politics. I don’t see how trying to curtail that at the platform level can possibly be to the benefit of the platform growth; though there are apparently instances out there for which political talk is anathema.
The OP has a point. It is difficult for non-technical users to find the content they are seeking on Mastodon. Hopefully the new search features will help, but there are not enough instances on the version that allows for the extended search (beyond hashtags.)
There is also the issue with the anti-capitalism culture on Mastodon that limits the exposure of posts from creatives. The feeling seems to be anything promotional or that promotes posts is bad. Why shouldn’t there be a way to discover what others are favoriting? Why not have a “top posts” feature or other way of discovering great content from across the fediverse?
I think this is especially true with communities, like the kink community, that get shunned on many other social networks. (And yes, ensure minors are protected.) The CW isn’t enough because it isn’t specific enough for filtering and must be applied to each post (or all posts automatically.) There needs to be a way to designate the general type of CW that is filterable & searchable (ie politics, violence, sex, etc.)
Fair point. It’s the difference between “I don’t want someone else’s arbitrary algorithm determining what I see” vs “I don’t want anybody to use someone else’s arbitrary algorithm.”
Personally, I prefer simple reverse chronological order (modulo my filters and blocklist). If somebody else prefers a fancier algorithm, that’s their choice.
Yes! I think the problem with complex algorithms is that they can be exploited, yet they are helpful for content discovery. The trick is to identify the content as organically as possible with as few ways to game the system as possible. Of course, now I’m getting way off my original comment. In no way do I have any expertise on algorithms and how easy/difficult they are to implement. I’m merely observing that they may serve some use to simplifying content discovery for less tech savvy users.
It is difficult for non-technical users to find the content they are seeking on Mastodon
It isn’t. I agree there is a steeper learning curve to Mastodon, but content tailoring isn’t one of the biggest hurdles. It’s the equivalent to Mac users suddenly struggling with a two button mouse on a PC; yeah, its different, but not that hard to get used to once some very mundane new muscle memory kicks in.
Curious that people who want to get away from other socials because of political reasons end up talking about political stuff.
Politics lis literally the interaction of functional adults aware that they live in a world.
Go to tiktok and stfu.