Context: Technology Connections is a YouTuber https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections
This is his account on Mastodon https://mas.to/@TechConnectify
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Not at all surprised.
I follow Alec on Mastodon and the vast majority of interactions over the past few months have been people aggressively "well ackshually"ing him or outright getting angry.
That isn’t to say it is all shit (I would like to think a few conversations I had with him were mutually pleasant). But his entire ethos is that he approaches problems from a practical “midwesterner” perspective. And that REALLY angers all the ideological nutjobs who are angry if anyone even suggests something that won’t advance their own pseudo-political goals.
And I’ve noticed it with a lot of other “celebrities” on Mastodon. The rest of us can have fun conversations while the shitheads stay to themselves. They are too high profile and the shitheads flock to them to make sure they understand why they are actually wrong and are a bad person for thinking something.
When you compare Alec’s recent videos with his early ones, it’s pretty clear that the negativity he receives has been wearing him down. Like many YouTubers, even when he’s sharing information about something he loves, he’s very bitter and sarcastic about it. Like, half of each video is trying to pre-argue with his trolls.
I understand why popular content creators have to set boundaries because it seems like a pretty soul-destroying job to have. If Bluesky helps him do that, more power to him. But for a nobody like me, I prefer Mastodon, largely because I’ve made friends with people on my local instance, and interacting with other servers is merely a bonus feature.
How low do you have to be to criticise Alec? He’s funny, informative, and I love the presentation of his videos. One of the last remaining great YouTubers. Apparently, being a pedophile is more acceptable on YouTube than being a good person. Now, why did I leave again…
Agreed. Technology Connections is one of my favorite channels – it’s always a good day when Alec posts a new video. I wish people would treat him better, he certainly deserves it.
It’s a joy to watch someone passionate and well-researched talk about something they enjoy. His videos do nothing but make me happy and interested in a thing. I can’t imagine someone watching him and getting mad about it.
Aww man, who is being mean to Alec? The guy is a YouTube gem.
Honestly I feel the fediverse is like the 90s internet. It’s like school clubs centered around different interests and it takes a little bit of work to find your peer group but once you do it’s great. People that look to it as a replacement for Twitter are looking for a town square to shout at people and hock their wares. Anyone that makes money from engagement ether directly or indirectly are not looking for camaraderie but a market.
Maybe this is part of why I keep bouncing off Mastodon. It feels tight-knit. It’s about individuals, about relationships.
I don’t fit in such a system. I’ve nothing to offer in a relationship, I cannot be a “comrade.” Still, I want news, media, and easily accessible knowledge being shared.
So, I’m a lurker, a consumer. I tend towards anonymous forums and spaces centered around topics rather than people. Or, I seek celebrities, and sellers, and content creators.
Either sort-of give me something I want, while Mastodon doesn’t. Too focused on the people, but without big names to follow.
Maybe that’s why I didn’t like Bluesky it was all attention-seeking and curated accounts
It didn’t help they did the exclusive invite only launch of the service making it appealing to that kind of person and pushing kind of behavior to 11.
The world is driven people hocking their wares i dont thinks we should stop that. In fact a federated store based on xmr might be the next step in global fediverse dominance.
Mastodon is more for people who like to have interactions or conversations back and forth with other people, while the big platforms are for influencers/broadcasters and consumers/viewers-- any back and forth interactions there are more between commenters than with the influencer/broadcaster. Of course there is some overlap and exceptions to that characterization, but that’s how it generally seems to me.
So IMO it’s not a competition, there’s plenty of room for both types of SM. Depending on a person’s preference they may use just Masto, just big SM, or use both, each for different reasons. The problem is when people expect Mastodon to be just like xitter/bsky/threads and get upset that it isn’t. Relax and use whichever platform(s) you like.
When I want to have back and forth between people on a regular basis, I choose chat apps. Mastodon feels like it’s trying to be a poorly designed chat app.
Kind of a combination maybe? Since Mastodon lets you find new people with similar interests by browsing what’s on your local timeline or hashtags of interest, and you can still follow people of interest without any chatting. I don’t know much about chat apps but don’t you have to already know the people beforehand, or come across them via a mutual acquaintance or invite to a chat room?
Of course, Mastodon can be and is used for broadcast/consume interactions, but not as much, since most broadcasters want a huge audience with little interaction, which means a big platform, while the ones on Mastodon are probably looking for a bit more interactive experience with a smaller audience.
The amount of negativity on that thread alone is enough for me to realise that bluesky is not for me. I enjoy the positivity I find on the fedi and decided I wouldn’t use a platform that algorithmically rewards negativity when I was harassed off facebook. I am glad that others are finding it nicer than twitter but for me it seems much the same but without Elon Musk
I had to unfollow him because discussion on my feed ended up so overwhelmingly negative I just didn’t want that in my life :/
With so many opportunities presented to it, Mastodon still hasn’t found its footing with the mainstream audience.
I think its users should accept the platform will remain a niche for the foreseeable future.
So, unfortunately when I go to Mastodon these days it’s a bit of a ghost town. And I say unfortunately with sincerity - there are some things I really liked about the ethos behind it. However, the reason I’m posting this here is that I couldn’t put it there without getting instant shit. 🧵…
im confused. is it a ghost town, or is it full of people giving him instant ‘shit’?
I think he is saying that of the total interactions he gets he would expect a large amount of hostility to his opinion on Mastodon, and it is also a small population which is available to interact with on platform. Consistent, just talking about the experience and an objective measure. In my opinion Mastodon will be helped by Bluesky adding a paid membership. The worse it is the better for Mastodon, and honestly if people have already started moving out from Twitter to Bluesky they are not locked in yet so moving out again is easier, they already dropped Twitter but Bluesky is not solidified yet.
We just need to get accounts as fediverse universal and instance agnostic and thats 99% of the problems solved
Could be wrong, but possibly he’s talking about this about “getting instant shit”:
https://mas.to/@TechConnectify/112995177480955078
(look also at the reply)
My gut instinct is to think, this is just a dumb person being mean on the Internet.
But upon reflection, no one would say this on yt, twitter, Facebook, etc. because people are sharing actual bullshit on there. You would be dunked on so hard for complaining about yt videos or just ignored. There would be no point in complaining.
On one hand it’s nice that Mastodon doesn’t have ads, and people usually don’t share bullshit, but does that logically result in attracting users who shit on someone for sharing a YouTube video, because sometimes other videos on YouTube are bad?
I like that Mastodon has actual conversations but I don’t like this guy being dumb.
“Ghost town” = Not driven to oversharing by algorithms.
“getting shit” = nobody wanting to listen to a youtuber’s outrage bait.
It must be confusing to log into the fediverse straight off of Youtube, though. “Why aren’t people compulsively clicking and subscribing to everything? How am I not being recommended radicalising posts by conspiracy theorists and terror organisations within five clicks?”
“Honey, this is Mastodon”
<switches to Blooskie>
“Ah, much better!”
This comment right here. This is what he’s talking about.
Good, mission accomplished 👍
You don’t have to be a dick, you know. There are other ways to live.
Oh, do educate me on my life choices based on an unrelated online comment, internet stranger 🙄
FWIW, I’m living my best life, rejecting influencers and enjoying a low- to no-drama fediverse. Anybody feeling bad for a Youtuber failing to peddle their bullshit to Mastodon can kindly get in the sea.
Have a nice day
Grow up
Removed by mod
I geniunely can’t understand what you’re trying to say
Perhaps the other reply was right–this comment is what he’s talking about
I unfollowed Alec on Fedi because every other post would be him complaining about his interactions on there. Reply guys. Trolls. Lack of algorithms which raise some of the better comments out of the drek. Insufficient moderation. Etc. This got boring and depressing to read about honestly.
However I think he’s totally right. Mastodon/Fedi works well for certain kinds of people. People with limited engagement, people posting mostly uncontroversial things, and perhaps people who just don’t give a shit. But for high-visibility folks like Alec the old-school unfiltered discourse seems really uncomfortable.
It has little to do with federation itself, I think. But if Mastodon ever added the choice for users to enable “modern social media algorithms” for their view of their feed I suspect it would work a lot better for many people.
Mastodon simply is a different thing than X/Bluesky. It’s more like RSS/Blog/IRC. It will never go mainstream unless they add (opt out) algorithms and a better search functionality. But maybe that’s just not worth it. Mastodon has already lost to Bluesky when it comes to being an open mainstream Twitter replacement.
I’m curious about if it’s even technically possible to build something federated that feels like a Twitter replacement, using the ActivityPub protocol.
Okay, that’s his opinion. Like his opinions on many things, I feel entirely free to disagree with him.
