If algorithmically increasing the political division and rage on social grew revenue the most, then 4chan would be the highest revenue generator. It's not.

The most engaging content is *fun content*. By far. It's not close.

https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/111081046636696300

This is not saying that algorithmic content is good for you, or that growth at all costs is good for society (or even sustainable).

But please, stop trying to say that politically divisive content is the most engaging. It absolutely is not.

1/N

Everyone that understands this, predicted Twitter's revenue drop and valuation drop well in advance. 🙋🏿‍♂️

If you drive away the people that create disproportionate amounts of fun, engaging content (Women, Black folk, young folk, LGBTQIA), then engagement will go down.

If you increase the people who create politically divisive content (yes, this is a euphemism for racist and transphobic content) then you will also drive away advertisers.

What does this have to do with Mastodon?

2/N

@mekkaokereke this is what people miss about DEI/EGS, it's literally an investment in a more palatable organisation.

Mastodon doesn't want or need advertising revenue.

It doesn't want or need an algorithmic feed.

But understand what most users are looking for in social media.

They're not looking for political enragement, or to be stressed out 24/7.

People are looking to have fun, be entertained and informed, learn, share, and connect with other good people safely.

Lack of community, safety, and onboarding are keeping people off of Mastodon. Not lack of rage driving algo.

3/3

@ekg IF the organization wants it to make change; otherwise DEI efforts become an extension of marketing for recruitment. @mekkaokereke

⬆️ @mekkaokereke

>> #Mastodon doesn't want or need advertising revenue

This is only sustainable in the long run if people pay a monthly fee, even if it’s small, to financially support their instance.

Otherwise, #Freeloaders will ruin it for everybody, sooner or later

@mekkaokereke I has potential to build also commercial services but more like within "scope of instance", i.e. offer healthy commercial environment. I.e. just like in town you know when you enter a grocery store, or movie rental service, and when you leave from there.

Normally **** drives Internet evolution at least when it comes to bandwidth but in the case of core services it is developers and I could imagine services that I might even use for some dev stuff based on ActivityHub. I've replaced Github gists with Mastodon for instance with the basic stuff. If something like that ever succeed, that could start to stretch to something bigger.

It is like moving from monarchy to democracy in the virtual space.

@mekkaokereke For instance, if I put my own startup (any possible startup), I would probably create isolated ActivityHub network to play the role of intranet instead 365 or Google Cloud shenanigans. It would open so many options to pivot in the future how to interact with outside world and best of class integration to the best possible network to hire best of their breed developers and hackers :-)

@mekkaokereke Might be too idealistic but I see it actually only viable commercial threat to the existing "Oligarch status quo" of IT ;-) Not that different how Internet was in let's say 1995.

It is good to denote also. that:

1. Mastodon is a self-governing social network, which does not have keep up any target rate of visitors in order to kept funded because it is not a company. We can have it as long as we want it. It is up to us.
2. Self-governance is sealed and stamped by Affero GPL, which prevents also running modified instances of the code without publishing the changes on request, in addition to the usual copyleft stuff.

Affero GPL in modern AI fuelled Internet is probably the most important license FSF has ever created, not from fairness perspective, but from confidentiality perspective. It is in. a way same as using something like Intel SGX but instead of CPU features and attestation to the Intel CA, legal enforcement is used to seal the confidentiality.

E.g. Signal uses AGPL because of this, as a commercial company.

@david_megginson @mekkaokereke This actually has some weird effects on people who see political messaging that’s not for them. Like the recent thing on here with the fundraising posts for example, or when people see a campaign speech for a specific audience that doesn’t contain appeals to them.

People get downright *mad* about seeing or hearing stuff that crosses over from another “bubble.” They act like it’s a personal slight.

@MisuseCase @david_megginson @mekkaokereke

I wish there was a way of getting people interested in looking for counterfactuals.

I try to keep some level of engagement with people media for people I disagree with.

@MisuseCase @mekkaokereke Yes, true. I mean, any decent human should be mad when Facebook shows them a meme about feeding trans people into a wood chipper, but for legit (non-hateful) political discourse, agreed that it can be helpful to hear some views outside your bubble.

@mekkaokereke to just make it absolutely clear, there's nothing wrong with discovery algorithms, as long as the user remains in control and that the algorithms are not predatory.

In essence chronological order should always be a first class feature, but we shouldn't dismiss the idea of having discovery features builtin, if said feature is developed out in the open and the user can easily disable it or avoid using it altogether.

I'd like to see a portrait image and video browser on #Mastodon.

@hopland @mekkaokereke

I like Bluesky's approach, where anyone can make and publish and algorithmic feeds, and anyone can sign up for what they want — or not.

@hopland @mekkaokereke I check the Explore tab every day. As I'm lucky to be on a great instance, it's always meaningful content promoted with boosts and likes.

I also follow a bot which posts trending (can't recall the method of calculation) hashtags across a select number of instances.

There's definitely room for helping people opt in to receive content outside the chronological feed.

@hopland @mekkaokereke
I think people don’t realise that you could easily run your experience through a third party algorithm, maybe one tailored to specific content such as Black rights, but the key thing is that you don’t have to and neither does anyone else have to have the same experience.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t already exist but very few people know about it.

This would be Mastodon Phase 2.