volkris @volkris@qoto.org
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
@tinker it's another case where I grind my ax about overlooking the empowerment of users.
SO OFTEN on this platform we focus on instances banning and unfederating and whatnot without considering the option of simply leaving it to users to choose their own adventure, empowering them to make that decision.
I just really wish Fediverse would spend more time focusing on empowering users instead of promoting instances making decisions for them.
@TCatInReality no, that's not how the US federal government is designed, with its system of separation of powers.
It is the duty of the president to faithfully execute his office, but beyond that, the DOJ's investigations are subject to prosecutorial discretion and bound by limitations that prevent it from breaking the independence of the judiciary.
The conflicts of interest loom large there.
@jrm4 isn't Discord a closed platform?
That's my impression, and as I glance around now I see only confirmation of that: it sounds like all of the content flows through the centralized servers and oversight of a company that discourages any innovation on its platform.
That's night and day compared with federation and what it enables.
@Rastal as I browse my feed I'm seeing a very different picture than what you describe, with a lot of people joining for other reasons AND a lot of people with different answers about Threads federation
@jrm4 well I'd extend that to say this place may not be better, and that's key to the why here.
This federation was designed because what's better for one person might not be better for another, so we can choose different instances instead of all being lumped into some notion of one better one.
So same with Threads.
Threads might be better for some users just as any other instance might be better for some user.
Yes, federate away!
And keep in mind that that federation represents the same philosophy: Threads, like different Fediverse instances, will be better for some and worse for others, so we empower users to choose what's best for each.
@lilithsaintcrow well, Fediverse is designed around the idea that instances federate and cooperate even though they don't trust each other.
No, you can't trust Facebook, but that lack of trust is part of the system here. Fediverse is set up to work without trust.
So it sounds like you're facing a personal cost that the trust argument doesn't really justify your committing to.
Well, the independence of the judiciary makes that tricky.
We don't want presidents to be going after the branch that has such an important role in overseeing the president.
Instead, this is where impeachment comes in.
It's really up to the people we elect to Congress, not the AG, to investigate allegations against Supreme Court justices and impeach when that's warranted.
@manlycoffee I don't blocking Threads is accelerating Fediverse's decline any more than embracing the federation marks the end of Fediverse.
The claims on both sides overstate the result.
Really, the two systems will work with their own userbases, functioning differently and separately, and both can benefit their users by cooperation through federation.
There's room for both.
@moxxi it's one of the axes I grind that I might see discussions happening every day about how to make this platform better, and yet I almost never hear them coming with a focus on empowering users.
The tech behind Fediverse is focused on instances, not users. People working on UIs seem to focus on making decisions for users instead of handing users power to make decisions.
It's just the attitude of this place from bottom to top that the users are kind of left out of the conversation, so this is the result.
@wjmaggos Yep, and plenty of organizations decided not to take the plunge based on such reasonable considerations.
And that was when there was much more marginal benefit then than in this case.
Even with the technological leap that came from a website there were factors counseling against it. The smaller step that is setting up on Fediverse makes that argument even harder to land.
@wjmaggos you're overlooking the on-the-ground realities and practicalities of doing that, though.
It's one thing to talk in the abstract about orgs needing to respond to changes in the online environment, but when it comes down to actually going through the act of setting those facilities up, there are other considerations.
From budget and resource constraints through legalities through marketing decisions, there are a lot of factors you're not considering here, ones that reasonably delay adoption.
Emphatically just an opinion
@jwz I think character limits are part of the gamified experience so many people are, unfortunately, looking for.
An awful lot of people are looking for rapid fire, exciting, firehoses of thoughtless content pouring through, with responses flying left and right and clicks and and and
Longer compositions slow that down.
People post threads? Well that helps keep the firehose moving! That's more things to click on and react to! Weee!
sigh
The post limits are not my taste, but even more, I think they represent a really toxic side of social media, the side that is obsessed with clicking and stats of interactions ahead of anything actually meaningful.
#Mastodon should not have adopted this aspect of #Twitter and #Fediverse in general should not encourage it in new interfaces.
Just my opinion, of course.
@techno well it might have been taste in addition to cost.
@WataruTenkawa@vivaldi.net
@SarahBreau I'll link to the case again if you'd like to read it. Yes, there has been a ton of misreporting and misunderstanding about this case.
SCOTX stressed that it was up to doctors, not courts, to determine whether an abortion was medically necessary. If the doctor found that it was then the court wouldn't have any legal authority to consider her in violation.
And the court tried to emphasize this over and over again. Another quick example:
"If Ms. Cox’s circumstances are, or have become, those that satisfy the statutory exception, no court order is needed."
As of the time of the ruling Cox had already left the state, so for her personally it was moot, but we should be emphasizing this ruling as it highlighted that doctors and not courts are to make these decisions.
@moxxi well currently users have fairly few and blunt tools for shaping their #Mastodon experiences at best, even setting aside vulnerability to bad actors.
You can follow others, which you have to seek out and then process in totality; you can check out local/public instance feeds, which can be a lot of noise to signal; you can follow hashtags, relying on authors to shape what you see by how they use tags; etc.
But all of those are clunky and don't let the user easily refine their feeds.
In fact, they tend to give others a lot of control over what goes into the firehose, to be directed at the user: the followed feed, the instance, or the hashtag author.
In the end, users are faced with all or nothing choices instead of finer controls over how they'd like to shape their feeds.
@jrm4 but again, since they're independent platforms providing different user experiences that better serve different user bases, I don't think the popularity comparison is very meaningful.
If the Meta user experience is better at serving more users, even while the Fediverse user experience is better at serving others, then great! Meta SHOULD be more popular since that means more users better served.
And yet that popularity comparison doesn't in any way take away from Fediverse serving us.
Let each platform serve their users the best regardless of how those numbers compare.
That's how to get the most users the best experiences.
The question was framed as charging extra for Spanish support, which I took to mean that Spanish support was an option, not the main language of the platform.
So with the framing of the question, one's getting a value-add option.
@lydiaconwell exactly.
Since it's a general instance it's likely to avoid making non-technical decisions for its users, as it'll be shooting for the greatest common denominator of users' wants.
@AnneTheWriter1 as you say, instances can and do impose blocks, which I think is really important, as it shows that often it's not users but instances curating feeds.
I WISH it was users curating their feeds, but so far that's not been a priority on this platform.
So far users don't have nearly as much control over their feeds as I wish they had.
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
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