That little button, the one saying ‘follow’? It’s lying to you. The follow lie is a classic tale of enshittification that’s occurred on nearly every social media platform. It’s pretty simple: You join a social media platform and find some people who interest you. You tap follow (or ‘Add friend’, ‘Like page’, ‘Subscribe’), because you want to see their content. For a while, everything works just fine. You see your best friend’s wedding photos, your favourite blogger’s posts.
Join the fediverse! 😀 There are no algorithms - all your followers will receive your content. It’s growing fast and getting more attention with threads joining and blue sky funding a bridge
Wholeheartedly agree, and that's why we need regulation (or litigation) to protect interoperability of social posts, without which every third party client is vulnerable
Another brilliant insightful letter from Louis. This so clearly exposes the limitations of large platforms for building a meaningful community and audience and how valuable platforms like Substack and Patreon are.
I create lists of different subjects in Xitter to solve two issues, one is TMI and the second is getting around the algorithm. It would be great if someone were to build an app that would enable me to bring my lists to the Fediverse so as people I follow on Xitter would automatically show up as an option to follow when they join some Fediverse platform.
oh dear, wait until you find out about the buttons that we use to send comments or form data to servers being labeled "submit". one would think that in computer context every action might be needed to be precise and not use double meaning words.
or about those GDPR and cookie privacy "consent" popups, where the majority of them only ever give you one option, usually green, labeled "i agree" or "i consent", and if you ever happen to actually get on a site that'd give you the option to reject or decline, nothing really happens.
So you would rather stay on an enshittified social network where a post reaches a tiny fraction of a percent of your followers, and somehow beg your users to give you their e-mail address than, oh, use Mastodon, where following works like it's supposed to.
As a consumer, I personally would love to only see the content I have chosen. But as a creator, I like the idea of reaching new people who aren't following me yet, presuming it would align with their interests. What would be a better solution for the creators to reach new people, but at the same time respect people's own choices?
Why not just have 2 feeds? As a consumer, I like to discover new stuff too! How about: here's a feed of the stuff you subscribed to (*only* the stuff you subscribed to). And here's a second feed of recommendations based on what we think you like.
I think one of the biggest problems is that when everybody is a content creator, we all value content a lot less. I have a few strong interestes that I tend to read and watch youtube videos about (watches, coins, computer and related hardware, and lesser subject that come and go like PC gaming or cars when I am about to buy one), but for people I am interested in, I prefer a website or books I can buy. There are authors whose books I always buy. There are websites I always go to. Hell, I still pay for a physical economist to get delivered.
One thing I do not have is a tictac app. I have never watched a video on Facebook, and I can go years without visiting that site. When I do go to facebook, I usually search people's names and see what they have posted.
Now I am 46 year old, so I probably do not matter, but then again, I do spend insane amounts of money on watches and coins, and my book expenses are in the thousands. Similarly, I juts bought a Toyota Camry. I know the advertisers have me dialed in (or more of a mix of my wife and I dialed in, which is extra funny because she is a generation younger than me with totally different interests, but they still show her watches and show me makeup).
I think the problem right now with content creation is a typical one in economics. There is an oversupply, so prices need to adjust. I think what Brandon Sanderson is doing with books is pretty cool. Other creators will need to come up with their own ways of monetizing their audiences. Relying on Facebook, Youtube or TicToc do not appear to be sound practices.
Perhaps this might also be why so many young people listen to massive amounts of really old music. My nephew was telling me about his favorite music, and so much of it was from the 1980's and 1990's, and not unlike my favorites when I was his age (16 years old). Such preferences cannot be good for new artists.
Join the fediverse! 😀 There are no algorithms - all your followers will receive your content. It’s growing fast and getting more attention with threads joining and blue sky funding a bridge
Use third party clients that go against the follow lie. Example: Squawker instead of Twitter.
Wholeheartedly agree, and that's why we need regulation (or litigation) to protect interoperability of social posts, without which every third party client is vulnerable
Another brilliant insightful letter from Louis. This so clearly exposes the limitations of large platforms for building a meaningful community and audience and how valuable platforms like Substack and Patreon are.
I create lists of different subjects in Xitter to solve two issues, one is TMI and the second is getting around the algorithm. It would be great if someone were to build an app that would enable me to bring my lists to the Fediverse so as people I follow on Xitter would automatically show up as an option to follow when they join some Fediverse platform.
oh dear, wait until you find out about the buttons that we use to send comments or form data to servers being labeled "submit". one would think that in computer context every action might be needed to be precise and not use double meaning words.
or about those GDPR and cookie privacy "consent" popups, where the majority of them only ever give you one option, usually green, labeled "i agree" or "i consent", and if you ever happen to actually get on a site that'd give you the option to reject or decline, nothing really happens.
So you would rather stay on an enshittified social network where a post reaches a tiny fraction of a percent of your followers, and somehow beg your users to give you their e-mail address than, oh, use Mastodon, where following works like it's supposed to.
As a consumer, I personally would love to only see the content I have chosen. But as a creator, I like the idea of reaching new people who aren't following me yet, presuming it would align with their interests. What would be a better solution for the creators to reach new people, but at the same time respect people's own choices?
Why not just have 2 feeds? As a consumer, I like to discover new stuff too! How about: here's a feed of the stuff you subscribed to (*only* the stuff you subscribed to). And here's a second feed of recommendations based on what we think you like.
I think one of the biggest problems is that when everybody is a content creator, we all value content a lot less. I have a few strong interestes that I tend to read and watch youtube videos about (watches, coins, computer and related hardware, and lesser subject that come and go like PC gaming or cars when I am about to buy one), but for people I am interested in, I prefer a website or books I can buy. There are authors whose books I always buy. There are websites I always go to. Hell, I still pay for a physical economist to get delivered.
One thing I do not have is a tictac app. I have never watched a video on Facebook, and I can go years without visiting that site. When I do go to facebook, I usually search people's names and see what they have posted.
Now I am 46 year old, so I probably do not matter, but then again, I do spend insane amounts of money on watches and coins, and my book expenses are in the thousands. Similarly, I juts bought a Toyota Camry. I know the advertisers have me dialed in (or more of a mix of my wife and I dialed in, which is extra funny because she is a generation younger than me with totally different interests, but they still show her watches and show me makeup).
I think the problem right now with content creation is a typical one in economics. There is an oversupply, so prices need to adjust. I think what Brandon Sanderson is doing with books is pretty cool. Other creators will need to come up with their own ways of monetizing their audiences. Relying on Facebook, Youtube or TicToc do not appear to be sound practices.
Perhaps this might also be why so many young people listen to massive amounts of really old music. My nephew was telling me about his favorite music, and so much of it was from the 1980's and 1990's, and not unlike my favorites when I was his age (16 years old). Such preferences cannot be good for new artists.