That Don’t Impress Me Much

Nov 17, 2022 | Dead Water, Mastodon, Twitter

My last post was about opening an account on Mastodon and feeling generally well-disposed towards it. My opinion has shifted over the short time that I’ve been on there. My view now is that I prefer(ed) Twitter as it was pre-Musk to Mastodon as it is now. This post is an attempt to articulate how my thoughts have shifted, not least for my own benefit.

To help me, I invoke the spirit of Shania Twain.

***

One of the more terrifying aspects of medieval and early-modern criminal law, certainly in Scotland, was a predilection towards burning the convicted. In large part this was drawn from biblical laws and punishments, and in most cases was related to crimes against natural law. The malefactor didn’t just have to be killed, they had to be thoroughly erased from existence because their very presence in creation was objectional to God. Indeed, in 1678, Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh wrote in his The Laws and Customs of Scotland in Matters Criminal that punishments for some particularly ‘atrocious’ crimes should be conducted in private or under the cover of darkness to avoid giving curious people any ideas.

I mention this because something of that same spirit prevails on Mastodon – the notion that some forms of wrong-think are so atrocious that they must be destroyed by fire, and hidden from the innocent eyes of decent users by de-platforming malefactors and defederation of servers/instances that bear the stain of their presence. I do not like that approach and reckon it will not survive contact with the larger world.

To misquote Shania,

I’ve known a few guys who think they’re pretty smart
But you’ve got your purity right down to an art
You think you’re all holy, you drive me up the wall
You’re all regular original know-it-alls
Oh-ooh-oh, you think you’re special
Oh-ooh-oh, you think you’re something else
OK, so you’re the thought police?
That don’t impress me much

People whose views differ from mine are voices I want to hear, or at least don’t mind hearing. And, anyway, other people’s right to hold opinions and their right to express them does not impose upon me any correlative obligation to listen. I block and mute on Twitter, but do that at my own initiative not at the whim of third parties who want to maintain ideological purity, I typically only block and mute on the basis of the way those views are expressed or when extended argument about topics gets tiresome.

To be clear, I’m not saying that there aren’t opinions out there that I find objectionable or that there aren’t bad actors telling lies for various ends, and I am not advocating a red in tooth and claw free-for-all approach to social interaction. But, notwithstanding recognition of the need for moderation and controls, I do not like being prohibited from seeing or hearing other people’s words and opinions because of someone else’s scruples, and that is the default position of Mastodon by design.

Much is made of a culture of kindness and tolerance on Mastodon, but when I’ve lifted the lino to see what’s underneath, I’ve seen some aggressively unpleasant attempts at forced moderation expressed in objectionable terms – not so much attempts to foster an ethos of kindness as the operation of levers to enforce silence while also expressing smug satisfaction about the superiority of the place. In that context, I am aware of the reported experiences of people of colour who have found the culture in the Fediverse to be unwelcoming at best and actively hostile at worst. The nature of Mastodon’s federated structure means it is difficult for me to see or experience that first-hand, but I have no reason to disbelieve those voices.

You’re all those guys who like to shine their ego
Wherever the zeitgeist goes there you are
I can’t believe you kiss your servers good night
Now, c’mon, baby, tell me? You must be jokin’, right?
Oh-ooh-oh, you think you’re something special
Oh-ooh-oh, you think you’re something else
OK, so you think that you’re refugees?
That don’t impress me much

I’ve made many good and genuine friends over the decades online on various list servers, forums, and platforms. As I said in the last post here,

Why bother? Well, it all comes down to two reasons: (i) at its best social media is genuinely social, fun and informative in exactly the same way as a night at the pub; (ii) out of sociability and engagement arises the potential to make people aware of my writing without spamming them.

I think Musk may well have done terminal damage to Twitter (see here for one reason why I think he has.) He emailed his remaining staff to say that he sees Twitter as ‘at heart a software and server business,’ which is about as complete a misunderstanding of what he bought as it’s possible to get, and that doesn’t bode well. For now, Twitter may or may not be on the tumbril rattling towards the scaffold, and Mastodon will do for some purposes – until something better comes along.

OK, so you’re Elon Musk?
That don’t impress me much …

Frogs, Bicycles and Mastodon

Nov 8, 2022 | Dead Water, Mastodon, Twitter

You will be familiar with the idea that the difference between a frog and a bicycle is that a competent engineer can disassemble a bicycle and rebuild it – possibly improving it in the process. The attempt to do that with a frog leads to catastrophic collapse of the frog, Failure to observe that fundamental distinction between bicycles and frogs is a category error with significant consequences, not least for the frog.

That brings us to the elongated muskrat and Twitter. The muskrat appears to have fallen into that same category error and the jury is out on whether or not the platform is going to be launched into eternity (or close it’s eyes to subluminary objects, as the old broadside accounts of hangings had it) along with the frog. Complex systems under stress can collapse beyond the point of recovery very quickly, even if their central nervous systems leave them twitching for some time afterwards. Is this the case with Twitter? Quite possibly.

Anyway, like an awful lot of other people, I have also opened an account at Mastodon, just in case. If you are at all inclined to look for me, I am here: @cosmic_serf@mastadonapp.uk.

So far, Mastodon has been interesting, mostly in a positive way. The server(s) are currently struggling with latency and capacity issues because of the sheer number of people who have joined, but beyond that I have some concerns.

I’ve been around the internet long enough to remember when it wasn’t at all clear that Mosaic and Gopher would work. Many of the ideals that framed those early days fell by the wayside as the whole thing was commercialised and monetised. Where the ideals survive is in the open-source scene from which Mastodon emerged, and in the attitudes of old-timers like me. I would like Mastodon to succeed, but the idea that Mastodon is not like other sites because *waves hands in vague fashion* is wrong. It may have been true a fortnight ago, but it isn’t now because new users are importing learned behaviour from Twitter. When ideals meet humans, ideals always suffer.

As with any new place, there is a learning curve, and part of that is to control the timeline to see only what I want to see – or, more precisely, to not see what I don’t want to see. I figured out how to do that with Twitter and Facebook, but have still to do the work with Mastodon.

Why bother? Well, it all comes down to two reasons: (i) at its best social media is genuinely social, fun and informative in exactly the same way as a night at the pub; (ii) out of sociability and engagement arises the potential to make people aware of my writing without spamming them.