Of course! How could I miss it. The argument: “User numbers are an indicator of quality”, is not valid, unless in context of the fediverse. Because…
Wait, I don’t think me, being the dumb asshat I am, understand that: Why? Why do you think user numbers indicate that something “can’t be as bad as you make it out to be” in the fediverse, but not anywhere else?
Reddit has more users than lemmy. Can’t be that bad then!
I see! Thank you for clarifying!
So let me see if I understand you correctly. I asked what Mastodon is for. You answered that Mastodon is for having meaningful conversations with people one on one about subjects important to you.
That would mean Mastodon is not in any way comparable to twitter, or any other social media platform of the like. To me it seems that, by this description you provide, it is best compared to a chat room, where you are together with a hand full of friends you already know, and can have a conversation. Just in a timeline that is a bit slower, and a bit more permanent than a chat room, but not quite as bloated as a classical internet forum.
That means Mastodon is not “social media”. The purpose of you being there is not to easily discover new stuff which might interest you. And likewise you also can’t easily reach out to new people with stuff that interests you, and which you think might interest other people. Mastodon doesn’t want you to be able to do that easily. Because Mastodon is an internet forum with people you already know, just with an added word limit.
So it seems I have misunderstood Mastodon. It doesn’t intend to be social media. It intends to be an early 2010s internet forum with a word limit. Now that I know what it is, and that this is what it is supposed to be, it makes a lot more sense to me.
And there are small independent artists who want to display their latest artwork to an audience of followers on a social media platform, with the potential of broader reach and impact. And there are activists, who aim to raise awareness by doing the same thing.
What you seem to be saying, is that social networks like Mastodon are not for that. No artists. No activism.
So, what’s Mastodon for?
I don’t see the problem. I don’t have a right to my screen name. Anyone can use variations of that name to post anything they want on any platforms they want. I can’t stop them. And I should not be able to stop them.
If my precious online identity gets hit in the confusion… Well, that’s the risk I take if I have tied my online identity to nothing else but a meaningless pseudonym, easily faked, copied, and impersonated.
For me, this is just a simple demonstration that you can’t trust the name “goat”, and a picture of a goat, as a reliable identifyer. Now that I type it out, this is just stupidly obvious. Anyone who thinks that a goat picture and a nickname reliably identify someone on the internet, is just being very, very stupid in this instance.
I find it dangerous to allow someone to impersonate someone else on the fediverse (an admin too) and begin starting trouble.
I don’t find that dangerous at all. I find it very disturbing that anyone would be stupid enough to believe that the nickname “goat” and a goat picture is enough to reliably identify them as the same person.
All in all, that seems like a non problem to me. A misunderstanding among a stupid minority, easily cleared up, whenever it is desired.
I don’t know if the fediverse is robust enough to fight them off as the pot of gold they see begins to overflow. It’s hard balance to find.
By now I think it’s not a balance which can be found. I think “migration to the next thing” is just part of the nature of online identity, if it’s important to you.
After some time the weaknesses of certain systems and platforms will start to show, especially if they start becoming “mainstream”. And then chances are good that pressure will mount, as a new platform will bring up which aims to adress at least some of the weaknesses of the previous platform. Rinse. Repeat.
The practical solution for that, is to simply search the topic you are interested in plus lemmy on google. Chances are best that you will find the most active community.
Since reddit’s search feature was completely unusable for the majority of its history, for me that is just “business as usual”. Though it would be nice to have a more integrated solution.
Okay. I believe that.
Yes? What have I done? Can you give me specific examples of my problematic actions which actively victimize already marginalized people constantly?
If you can not, then we might have a bit of a problem. After all, you don’t know what I did or did not do. You don’t know if I did that, or how I did that. To me that seems like ignorant stereotyping. It is something racists regularly engage in, and a big common part of what makes lots of different bigoted and prejudiced groups of people (not limited to just racists) into such a big problem.
So I would appreciate if you could stop to ignorantly stereotype me without knowing me. If you still choose do that… Well, actually, I don’t mind it that much. You are just a random internet person after all. But if you behave like that, you are sharing that behavior with racists, and lots of other types of bigots. If you think that is a good idea, feel free to carry on. But I thought I should let you know.