Olives @olives@qoto.org

@damon I kind of get why they might think that but it goes back to the silver bullet mindset about the fediverse.

@damon I remember there was someone who said you should be prohibited from linking to Twitter on Mastodon.

Except, I have linked to Twitter.

This isn't because I think Twitter is a great site, but because there was an important bit of news which I wanted to cover in a post.

I understand there are people who might use platforms like Bluesky and Twitter. I don't think it's fruitful to attack anyone who does so.

@damon I've seen someone get banned for being too critical of Mastodon. The admin just let people hurl abuse, then when they retaliated they slammed them (but not the harassers). It's nuts.

@damon One way they could maybe improve this would be to have multiple bubbles, one for likes and one for other things. Maybe, you could hover over it to get a breakdown.

When you see just the indicator, it's not clear whether it's a reply, in which case you might take a look at it sooner, or a like.

Another thing is that sometimes someone will go through a bunch of your posts to give them a like. There could be an event that is like "person liked 7 of your posts" and you could click on it to get the details.

@damon Unrelated to my previous post.

In a few cases, I saw what one might call the "buddy". An admin who when someone goes up to someone and provokes a fight because they don't like something they said, they turn a blind eye because they agree with them.

There are progressive leaning "buddies".

The "buddy" might even spin it around that their friend is the "real" victim. And it's just not worth engaging in fedi drama just to get at one asshole.

Unfortunately, there are people who really over-sell Mastodon and people end up with unrealistic expectations.

@damon There was a time when I was looking at the anime tag and there was barely any actual discourse about shows.

A lot of it was people mocking particular titles (or elements or genres). I ended up blocking a couple of smaller instances, which I'm not even kidding, marketed themselves as "toxicity free".

I get it. Not every title is everyone's cup of tea. There is a streak of nastiness though which is hard to describe.

@damon The silver bullet assumes every problem can be solved by divvying everything up into little digital fiefdoms which talk to each other.

I don't like Bluesky the company but I found elements of it interesting (the company plays more of a role than people assume, for instance, harassing lists might be deleted).

Like Mastodon, I feel Bluesky over-sells itself. It claims to be decentralized but the claim rings hollow. Similarly, Mastodon sold a very civil space but this set people up with unrealistic expectations.

@damon Personally, I've been meaning to take a look at Nostr for some time. I don't know much about the culture but it is technically interesting.

You might want to take a look at cwtch.im which started with greater ambitions before being scaled back to a chat.

@damon Hey, Damon, I apologize if we got off on the wrong foot at first (I could have worded that post better), but a lot of your points are pretty spot on.