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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Okay, that’s his opinion. Like his opinions on many things, I feel entirely free to disagree with him.
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
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.
Aww man, who is being mean to Alec? The guy is a YouTube gem.
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.
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.
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.
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’?
“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.
Could be wrong, but possibly he’s talking about this about “getting instant shit”:
https://mas.to/@TechConnectify/112995177480955078
(look also at the reply)
I’ve gotten an extremely similar comment on a couple posts I’ve made here on lemmy, in a video community no less.
Personally I just said something’s like “welp, sorry that’s not your preferred format.” and then just move on.
With how infrequent posts like that are, they don’t effect me at all, but It’d probably suck more if I was consistently getting negative comments like that,
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.
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 have lost count the amount of times I’ve shared a YT video on Lemmy, and people bitch about the fact that they have to spend 15-60 minutes watching it, or immediately ask for some TL;DR about it. Like, I’m curating content for you, sharing a video I liked among the other videos that you probably didn’t like, and people just want to universally shit on the format because of that one bad experience from two years ago when they dared to go to the web site for 5 minutes.
People love to shit on TikTok, but secretly, that’s the length of content a majority of this audience wants, and it’s dumb. If you don’t want to devolve into a TikToker, then watch longer videos and don’t bitch when somebody asks you to watch a video for 10 minutes. If you don’t like it after a few minutes in, fine, go watch something else.
Could be wrong, or just more domain-specific, bu my experience is people don’t complain that the video is 15-30 minutes long, is that it’s a video (and that long) when the information could have been more succintly and practically displayed in a text tutorial or a blog format. Basically “this could have been an e-mail”.
Not to mention that way people avoid having to go to YT which is yet another cesspit community-wise.
You are right that people have shorter attention spans ofc, but then again when it comes to tackling it it’s largely an issue of medium: in the world of coding you can convey easily copyable or testable instructions in text format maybe with attachments, that can be verified in up to 60 seconds… or you could post a 30 minutes long video plus ads. Why would anyone expect the Fediverse, with the kind of people who are naturally attracted to it, to prefer the latter, no idea.
“You are right that people have shorter attention spans ofc”
Why do we all endlessly state this narrative as if it was a fact.
Like I get the feeling but there is very little good evidence for it.
Scientists don’t even largely consider attention span a useful concept to understand the human brain.
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.
I’m sorry he hasn’t liked it, but critique is how we get better. Hope Mastodon keeps growing.
It’s frustrating, because a lot of the interesting people to follow and engage with on Mastodon have also jumped to Bluesky, and the fedi crowd continues to crow about algorithms and brain rot, when the biggest reason people bounce off of Mastodon is the other people on Mastodon.
There’s a deep undercurrent of “angry, hostile nerd”. When people started flooding Mastodon in 2022, you could see the binary reaction of “Finally, the recognition we deserve!” and also “you’re in my house now, you fucking normie, and you’d better start acting like it”.
Unsurprisingly, the “fucking normies” noped out, either immediately, or as soon as they had another option that satisfied their objections with Twitter.
But we’re going to wring our hands and bitch about onboarding flows and the great sin of defederation, because it let’s us ignore that we are the problem.
I agree!!!
Speaking of critique, this reply thread on Mastodon by him is probably worth reading (regardless whether you agree or not) https://mas.to/@TechConnectify/113056731556590285
The link isn’t operational.
Sorry, try this one https://mas.to/@TechConnectify/113056731556590285
Thanks. This works. I fully agree with comments made. I still have not found Mastodon intuitive to use daily as I find Lemmy.
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.
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.
