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#Mastodon's first annual report! Read about our financials, accomplishments, and plans. Available under:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/mastodon-annual-61911077
the bottomline here is that facebook is surviving solely on groups since all communities moved to facebook due to the user availability from back when it was “the place on the internet to be”.
Yeah I also think it’s a matter of groups are the only way to really scale a social media service.
Humans have baggage. They come with a certain level of social toxicity. Any community has to deal with this. Dunbars number and all that jazz.
Facebook tries to get around it by using machine learning moderation, and paying people but this isn’t a scalable solution. Trolls can always produce more filth, and the pay and work conditions of the FB moderators is famously a black eye on their public image and make them look bad. And the AI moderation simply doesn’t work, isn’t smart enough.
So the only real solution is (and has always been) self moderation. Communities have to self moderate, build norms, enforce those norms etc.
all of above, which, if you consider it, there is an actual fediverse competitor, and that competitor is mastodon. it offers everything that users came to facebook (and twitter) for, except for groups. the survival of facebook remains because of users, of course. but as they are slowly digging their own grave for the sake of ads, mastodon stands to gain. the main issue with mastodon and the fediverse is the lack of means to profit as a user, which has also become the expected norm of the internet. users expect to be able to profit form their content, and mastodon (and lemmy) is designed to prevent that as it is designed to prevent ads and exposure of that kind. so it’s a bit of a dilemma. it has nearly all the best parts of classic online communities and communication, but the audience is no longer interested because of the change in narrative and profits being more highlighted than ever in the minds of most. no one does anything for free anymore.
Yeah I hate to say it but there’s a part of me that wonders if allowing instances to run ads should be something enabled by these platforms. After all, even prior to social media the internet has pretty much always been largely sustained by ads. Blogs, flash game portals… I mean Homestarrunner was unusual in it’s day for not having ads. Do I wish we didn’t have ads? Yes. But also I can see how it might simply be the nature of the beast.
I just recently learned about Friendica which is basically a Facebook alternative. It’s neat!
Yeah I also think it’s a matter of groups are the only way to really scale a social media service.
Humans have baggage. They come with a certain level of social toxicity. Any community has to deal with this. Dunbars number and all that jazz.
Facebook tries to get around it by using machine learning moderation, and paying people but this isn’t a scalable solution. Trolls can always produce more filth, and the pay and work conditions of the FB moderators is famously a black eye on their public image and make them look bad. And the AI moderation simply doesn’t work, isn’t smart enough.
So the only real solution is (and has always been) self moderation. Communities have to self moderate, build norms, enforce those norms etc.
Yeah I hate to say it but there’s a part of me that wonders if allowing instances to run ads should be something enabled by these platforms. After all, even prior to social media the internet has pretty much always been largely sustained by ads. Blogs, flash game portals… I mean Homestarrunner was unusual in it’s day for not having ads. Do I wish we didn’t have ads? Yes. But also I can see how it might simply be the nature of the beast.
I just recently learned about Friendica which is basically a Facebook alternative. It’s neat!