Susan Szews @betawriter@qoto.org

My view on T2FA: EM has been maniacally focused on cutting costs on twitter since he took over - we can agree that it’s reckless, shortsighted, etc, but I suspect the SMS 2FA flap is narrowly about costs - I have to believe they get a big bill from Twillio (or whomever they use now) each month for SMS services, and since there (probably) aren’t more servers to shut off, kitchens to close, leases to default on, or moderators to fire, this is next in the pile of expenses to manage.

Just as medieval nobles had no shortage of people telling them that they were pious despite their wars and mistresses, so does the modern CEO class have no shortage of sycophants assuring them that they are very intelligent.

The desired virtues may change, but the nature of power does not, not really.

I see a lot of people talking about how Mastodon "Feels like the Internet I remember from 20 years ago."

That's no accident. That's Federation. That's UseNet, IRC, Email, Message Boards, etc. What do they all have in common?

Federation: Users congregating around watering holes of common interest, but still being a part of a larger whole.

THIS IS HOW THE INTERNET WAS DESIGNED TO BE. And I am HERE for it.

Lotta talk about replacing Twitter.

The better dialogue is how to get people to re-evaluate how they engage with the internet.

Personally, I'm convinced of two things:

- You can't 1:1 replace Twitter unless it's a similar top-down walled garden.

- Most people probably shouldn't want a Twitter replacement, since Twitter is bad for us.

Instead of finding/molding/creating a replacement, we should encourage people (and ourselves!) to focus on what they like most about internet interaction.

Twitter is now begging some employees who Musk laid off to come back.

Some were apparently laid off by “mistake,” others were let go before management realized that their experience was crucial to build the new features Musk envisions. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-06/twitter-now-asks-some-fired-workers-to-please-come-back #tech #technology #news #media #journalist #elon #twittermi #twitterefugee

I like the early internet vibe and also the slowness here.

So here's what I've learned.
Mastodon isn't Twitter.
And that's by design.
You've grown used to things designed to give you that anger rush.
Mastodon is very deliberately built to avoid that.
The temptation is to replicate your Twitter experience.
Picking arguments, amplifying trolls.
Please don't.
This isn't your house, people here put time into building it.
Content warnings, ALT tags.
Don't turn it into a replica of the mess you just left.
If you miss the fights, the birdsite is still there.

I just figured out what creating a Mastodon account (and picking a server) reminded me of: An unfamiliar video game where the first thing you have to do is choose character attributes, but you have no idea what effects they have.