Mastodon Is Crumbling (complimentory)
... oh gosh DARN it I just realized that I stole my "the fissures and fractures and frictions that happen serve to, counterintuitively, EXPAND the fediverse social space by giving it recognizable landmarks and spacial distinctions that make navigation and location possible" attitude...
... from freaking HOMESTUCK.
Anyways, where is Ana Valens nowadays? She actually knew how to report on this place and basically every journalist coming in with their Account Created November 2022 before jumping immediately onto their keyboards should be tossing company money at her and sitting politely at her feet.
@gaditb i disagree pretty strongly but you should check out https://privacy.thenexus.today/mastodon-a-partial-history/
@Lady (About the friction or about the "reporters should seek out Ana Valens" or about something else?)
@gaditb my impression of Ana’s coverage is that she largely leaned on Popular Users to make her points instead of discussing her own experiences as a user on the platform, which to me lacked journalistic integrity and speaking personally was not the kind of coverage i would have liked to see
i agree that it was still better than a lot of the coverage happening today, but just once i would like to see someone talking about Mastodon who actually has some experience in ethnography 😩
@Lady Like not to reduce everything to pithy quips or to claim that word-fun makes things more likely to be true, but
This Isn't Birdsite
There Aren't Bird's-Eye Views Here
(there weren't there, either, but)
@gaditb yeah what really irked me about Mastodon is Crumbling was that she was like “queer users on mastodon say this!” without like… mentioning… that category included her…?
(i was also irked because she cited mourning mastodon but only spoke to shel and not me lmao; like you could have done a little followup work there)
[this isn't shade at shel but them being chosen as the mouthpiece of Queer Mastodon felt a bit journalistically sus and nepotistic to me; they had no real credentials for that position over (long list of other people active in early mastodev or glitchsoc) [also it hasn't aged well]]
anyway don't take this as stronger than it is; i'm not calling the piece bunk or anything, but i definitely felt like some things could have been done better
@Lady *nods sagely*
Queer users on mastodon say this yes... but also..?, perhaps queer users on mastodon also don't say this..?
.. also maybe they say this a slightly different way with a slightly different meaning,
... and then also the other people who just happen to be queer, and also on mastodon, also.
*falls over*
@Lady That's fair.
I think it needs to be a both-and, though? Like it's never been the case that any one person has the definitive experience of a platform, but it's REALLY not the case here.
(... except to the extent that Gargron's experience is definitive to HIM, and informs the BDFL decisions he makes. But lIKE,,)
And I think a perspective that actually goes in saying "here are these experiences here, here, and here, and we can arguably combine those into a broader perspective" (quite possibly ".. and mine" should be explicitly part of that) is more accurate than saying "here is What It's Like".
(Especially when most articles and impressions are doing that "leaning entirely on popular users" ANYWAYS, and just leaving who they are and half of what they said out.)
... but yes, there is in fact an Entire Field whose point is doing that and it is called Ethnography, and journalists should Do THAT, Darnit.