Mastodon grows up

[james_davis_nicoll]

The social network Mastodon is finally at the point the interwebnets were on April 12, 1994. It just had a Green Card moment, with an inundation of spam.

Comments

[kedamono]

I have an account but... eeeeeehhhhh... It's even more of an echo chamber than Facebook.

[ariaflame]

Well given that what you get out of Mastodon is what you put into it, that would be a result of what you chose to follow.

[jreynoldsward]

That's true of any social media platform. Mastodon isn't special.

[ariaflame]

Didn't say it was. But some of them have an algorithm designed to feed you things, like twitter feeds you right wing stuff at the moment. Mastodon is a mirror. What you get out of it is what you put into it. Hashtags seems to be the key to it. Facebook gives you whatever it thinks will get you engaging (plus ads) but it made me too grouchy so I stopped. Youtube's autoplay can take you down some dark rabbitholes I'm told, which is why I turned it off. I don't know about most of the others because I don't use them.

[leecetheartist]

The moment that I realised that you could follow hashtags really opened things up.

[ariaflame]

Oh yes, finding the right hashtag can fill your feed, or at least find you some new interesting people to follow, who then boost other interesting people.

[(Anonymous)]

It’s nowhere near the first spam wave - it’s just this one’s relatively high volume and concentrated on mastodon.social because they have poor moderation and open signups.

[estrevan]

It’s nowhere near the first spam wave - it’s just this one is specific to mastodon.social, where open signups and lax moderation amplifies the effect.

[kithrup]

Oh, that's what Kevin was talking about.

[elusis]

Aw, I feel like we should get it a little cake or something.

[estrevan]

Obligatory slightly weary reminder that the fediverse didn’t spring into being a month before the last influx, even though every new influx acts as if it had.