@hermes it actually makes a lot of sense! it’s just like email. on the app, it’s completely seamless, as mobile clients tend to be. on the web, it’s like webmail, and different servers are different providers. you can interact freely with anyone, but to use more server specific tools (like following) you gotta add them on your own server, just like adding email contacts
@hermes i also think your choice of server determines your experience here pretty hard. since there’s no algorithmic network effects it’s all voluntary self-association, you want to fill your local timeline with friendly faces. i was on mastodon.social before it was just “twitter but worse”. best to treat it as a different approach entirely
@pujz yesh thats one thing i actually DONT love but understand how and why it works this way.
frontloading community choice vs ambiently building the spcial graph
@hermes @pujz I’m talking actual Mastodon People, though. There are like 5 million people posting here, like for years. Photo posters. People who’s entire thing is “the junkyard down the street from my house.” The bot game is up to speed. It’s a real place! Unlike bsky, which seems to be in an arms race between becoming a real place and being completely colonized by auto-following bitcoin shitlords.
@phil__harmonic @taalumot @hermes this is what set me off a bit. natural to be excited about finding a new place (i clearly am right now!) but there’s something suspect and sanctimonious when all that people talk about is how amazing this new app is
@phil__harmonic @pujz @hermes gdi phil
@taalumot @phil__harmonic this cracked me Up
@pujz @phil__harmonic @taalumot
there's genuinely nothing to talk about on there except the thing itself
@pujz @phil__harmonic @hermes whereas this is the longest conversation I’ve ever had about Mastodon on Mastodon, which is not to say I haven’t had INTERMINABLE conversations about Mastodon in Twitter DMs