Last night I shared two posts. The first was positive (Fred Rogers) & the second was abysmal (normalized gun violence).
On #Twitter, I suspect the latter would have garnered far more attention bc a race for publicly visible RTs, likes & follows favors promoting shock & outrage.
But here on #Mastodon, Mister Rogers wisdom was shared more widely.
This isn’t a scientific analysis but a mere observation reinforcing that social media will be what we make it. And I like this neighborhood.
@Sheril I've felt that social media algorithms were actually the main thing promoting the provocative behavior of many of its users, but now maybe I have proof of that. It was just annoying to hear people try to criticize the whole internet as toxic, when really, it seems that it really only became worse with the rise of social media. To me, the internet was never a tool for evil, nor that humans were naturally evil and must be controlled. It was just that people like Zuckerberg and Dorsey saw the money from enshittifying how we communicate.
@Sheril You'll find, I expect, that the response rate tails off steadily on Mastodon as the number of people reading and boosting naturally tapers off, where on the other site, once the ago has determined that you post provokes a response (hostile is a response) it will keep its response rate artificially high as it slams your note down people's necks for several days.
@Sheril Twitter has started making a business of farming outrage. Rewarding "engagement" encourages trolling and fighting. This ends up being reflected in the user base and how they engage.
@Sheril
Hello, dear Sheril.
Well observed, is (not only) you like that.
Here it is emphatic, peaceful, knowledge based. And fun.
At the killed bird since Elon's takeover only chaos. Aluhutträger, fascists, QAnon followers, Reichsbürger, conspiracy theorists, science deniers, ... nobody can imagine in wildest nightmares.
Some of us know what elon wants, a platform from bank, payment service, ... all the way to a porn shop. This is what the child dreams of from an early age.
💚Love greetings.💚
@Sheril some corners of the internet are like those nice hidden spots in nature that can be enjoyed fully because they are visited by a few decent people, that is until the crowds will discover them and make it less enjoyable and then it follows the horde of trolls because they are attracted to crowds which are the targets of their anger and loneliness
Ultimately are these individuals that make a place unlivable
We live in a #NewsMedia world populated by relentlessly negative #news stories.
The for-profit sector of #journalism understands that news which activates the fear centers of our brain, tends to get more attention. What that says about us humans, is an interesting question. Theories abound 😜
Sadly this has left many of us with a distorted and fearful world view.
There are many good things happening which are all too rarely reported.
@mnutty@Sheril What it says about humans is that we evolved to avoid dying when possible so dangerous situations focus our attention instinctively. Then newspapers make a conscious effort to exploit this. The sensationalism so often ascribed to social media is actually the same as print media has always used to sell more papers
@Sheril
This is definitely a nice neighborhood. I think your observation also points to the effect generated by the algorithm. Glad I'm on the fediverse.
This has been my experience as well. Much higher engagement over here on Mastodon, and the overall sentiment is much more positive. It's been the main reason I abandoned our Twitter account and post exclusively over on Mastodon now.
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