OC What is it with the furry art community and mastodon?

I use twitter and I really like the furry art community on there. I also like Mastodon or related ActivityPub services.

Due to recent events lots of people search for alternatives and I feel just very frustrated see all those artists looking for Zucks Threads or Jacks Bluesky when Mastodon is right there, without a chance of a twitter situation ever happening again. They seem to avoid Mastodon like cats avoiding water.
What have we done wrong, and how can we make it better.

savvywolf, (edited )
@savvywolf@pawb.social avatar

I think it’s just marketing, tbh. Bluesky is exclusive and thus getting into it means You Are Important. Threads is basically one click away for people who already use Instagram, which I guess is their target market. Such is the power of these megacorps, they can just throw advertising at the problem and it mostly works.

I want to hope that eventually people will leave those platforms once the excitement wears off and they realize that they are problematic (training AI with user posts, poor moderation, privacy, etc.). Or maybe some big controversy will happen which causes a Twitter like situation for them. But realistically, I don’t see either happening short term.

But honestly, Mastodon has the IRC problem where it seems to be aimed at “techies” and require significant buy-in to its ideology. I made an account with Otaku to follow someone last night, and all it needed was an email and password. Whereas for Mastodon you need to pick an instance, write an application (how much do you need to write? Is it an exam? Will you get rejected?) and wait. The Mastodon team have done an amazing work on making all of this as smooth as possible, but ultimately it’s a hurdle that you need to invest time and energy to understanding. And then your friend just sends you a BlueSky invite and you decide to just go there.

I’m not sure I agree with other comments saying that it’s because it’s too hard or that people think it’s too hard… It’s more that it’s an additional hurdle and complexity that people won’t go through unless they agree with the fediverse ideology.

And then there’s the elephant in the room, which is probably just my personal experience. My first Lemmy account was on an instance that defederated with a bunch of others, and my “main” Mastadon account is/was with an instance that was silenced by meow.social for an unknown reason. Not a good experience for me. Not to mention the immature “I’ll defed you if you don’t block Meta!” thing going on right now…

Fear of “Picking the right instance” is legit something I would have left the fediverse for if I wasn’t so angry at megacorps all the time. I don’t want politics in my social media as a matter of policy, and “fediverse politics” is something that I feel I always need to be aware of. And it results in me making long venty posts like this, because I have Opinions…

Although, I have a question… How many fediverse accounts do people here have? Is having multiple mastodon/lemmy accounts something that’s normal, but not really talked about?

EDIT: Wow, I did not realize how much I posted until I sent it. See why I try to avoid drama and politics? :P

crazy_pony,
@crazy_pony@rubber.social avatar

@savvywolf @Alexmitter

I have exactly one account since the very early days. I somewhat would love to split in two or three for different niche interests on different servers but even i am somewhat paralysed by the choice which one

and meow.social maybe i am stuck in the same trap as i try to contact someone there since a year without any reaction ever

savvywolf,
@savvywolf@pawb.social avatar

What I do is to search a handle on the other instance (e.g. search for @crazy_pony in meow.social’s search box). I think if it shows up there (and is decently up to date), it means the instance hasn’t entirely defederated. I can’t say that this is 100% accurate though, or if it covers other things that can happen.

Alexmitter,
Alexmitter avatar

write an application (how much do you need to write? Is it an exam? Will you get rejected?

Wait what? Seriously? This was not a thing back when I created my account.

crazy_pony,
@crazy_pony@rubber.social avatar

@Alexmitter @savvywolf

It started in November 2022 when the first wave from Twitter came

Most instances very quickly set up an procedure that you have to write an application why you want to join, to get maybe an invitation from the owner to join their instance

Kichae,

Some smaller instances have applications. This is not a feature used by any site looking to be larger or general interest.

Complaining about it is a bad faith argument and points to the argurer having not even tried the main servers.

Want to be in a niche community? Be prepared to demonstrate you belong there.

savvywolf,
@savvywolf@pawb.social avatar

To be clear, I’m not really complaining about it. I actually think this is something that should be normalized and is good for social media platforms (as opposed to verifying you based on phone number or photograph or nonsense).

I’m just saying that Mastodon and Lemmy are the only platforms where this kind of thing is relatively widespread, and it does act as a hurdle for those who have never seen this kind of thing before.

Alexmitter,
Alexmitter avatar

I honestly do not understand niche mastodon servers. I follow the users I want to follow, no matter on what instance they are and finding new users happens by the retoot of users they find interesting. I just see no reason why it would matter that they are all on the same instance as me.

HubertManne,
HubertManne avatar

Yeah I don't view instances in terms of content but rather in user experience. I chose kbin because I tried a few and liked it. I like a lot of options to curate my own feed both in maximum possible sources and ability to block sources. If I moved to another instance it would likely be around that type of ideal. That being said Im sorta lazy.

Muskwalker,

The ‘local’ timeline is probably more useful on niche servers.
Might also flavor your federated feed and make finding others in the niche more likely.
Also if the niche is of an unpopular or marginalized or nsfw sort, you’ll know the local moderation will be more amenable to what you want to post about.

But in general it doesn’t super matter, no.

savvywolf,
@savvywolf@pawb.social avatar

This is something I’ve been thinking about, imagine you have no experience with Mastodon, and you go to an instance that looks good. You go to sign up and you are hit with a form saying “Please leave a message with your application”.

Of course, we know that it’s just for rooting out bots and obvious trolls, but without that experience, it looks like you are being judged as to whether you are a good “fit” for the community. Most people’s experiences with “applications” are for jobs, university, that sort of thing, where you need to convince someone that you are good enough to join them.

blivet,
blivet avatar

Exactly. It's really off-putting. And that is after the prospective user has come to grips with the idea that they can't just create a "Mastodon account", the way they could with Twitter or any other social media application they are likely to have encountered, and that they have to choose an "instance", whatever that is. There are quite a few hurdles to using Mastodon that IMO the average user isn't going to bother jumping.

Capydeev,
@Capydeev@pawb.social avatar

I remember a viral post on Twitter from someone listing nothing but complaints about Mastodon/federation which was written after the big furry instance, snouts.online, imploded. This was a few years ago. I’ll admit it made me skeptical about the fediverse, but after actually trying it out for myself it’s not as bad as that thread made out. Might be that that thread is still in the back of people’s minds when they consider twit alternatives.

ZILtoid1991,
ZILtoid1991 avatar

A problem is that some of the early adopters of Mastodon were the worst people, that were banned from Twitter for hatespeech, thus giving it a bad name. Early on, Mastodon was known as "an alternative Twitter for nazis".

Alexmitter,
Alexmitter avatar

I never heard that about mastodon. Gab.ai was that.

RandomStickman,
RandomStickman avatar

I can't stop seeing furry art on Mastodon. If I can channel all of those to you I would lol

Alexmitter,
Alexmitter avatar

I also see lots, but nearly non of the artists I most like.

bashfluff,

Simple: if what you want is to try to get eyeballs on your art, you’re not going to post it on a website that restricts its visibility. I’m never going to see that much content beyond my own instance. I need to follow the artists individually to see their art, or they need to be somehow connected to someone on my instance.

That’s the ultimate non-starter.

Twitter doesn’t have this problem, and Twitter still works (mostly). It’s still the only reliable source for commissions.

Alexmitter,
Alexmitter avatar

I’m never going to see that much content beyond my own instance.

I just do not see that. The way I found artists I like on twitter was by what other artists I like retweeted or based on specific hashtags. And thats the same way I found all artists I like on Mastodon that I did not yet know from Twitter.
Like yes sure the amount of people simply is larger on Twitter, so that is a valid point. Yet I see tons of artists I like going onto Bluesky which is invitation only and made by a club of web3 people which is something normally famously unpopular with art twitter, or Threads which is limited to the US and UK. There is the same problem, yet artists flock to it.

IncognitoWolf,

I dunno, I suggest looking at places like The Furry Fediverse. Lots of instances there for the furries! Cyberfurz is an instance I would recommend. But at the end of the day, the only real way to get artists to follow is to just be the change you want, and they will follow for the interaction. Places get big and centralized because "all my friends are there" or similar.

Wander,
@Wander@yiffit.net avatar

Remember how people said that from millenials onwards every generation will be skilled in tech? It so happens that gen-z actually ranks lower in advanced tech skills. Gen-Z learned to use tech, but not to understand it as much as those of us who experienced the early-to-mid internet and computers.

As such there’s a large amount of people who don’t know or understand the pros of decentralized platforms like Mastodon. And of course, there’s also the artists who need to follow the masses because they make a living out of it.

I’m oversimplifying things a lot, but if you grew up discovering the internet through your parents’ ipad, there’s a higher chance that the corporate internet has a much strong impact / incentive for you.

Alexmitter,
Alexmitter avatar

It so happens that gen-z actually ranks lower in advanced tech skills. Gen-Z learned to use tech, but not to understand it as much as those of us who experienced the early-to-mid internet and computers.

The kids today do not even know what a folder is, or what filesystems do. I am scared about our all future.
We need to do it like the brits, give every kid a Rasperry Pi in school and teach them actual computer skills, not Excel.

yote_zip,
@yote_zip@pawb.social avatar

It is by design, unfortunately. Apple pushes iPads into schools so that people grow up in Apple’s walled garden.

Alexmitter,
Alexmitter avatar

If they live in the US, where this is probably the most common, I guess most kids to anyways.

Nyla_Smokeyface,

How do kids not know what a folder is? All operating systems have it. Even iOS has folders, whether in the Files app or just as the homescreen folder.

I will admit that I am not an expert on how the different filesystems work.

kitsuneofinari,
@kitsuneofinari@yiffit.net avatar

The thing is, most of them are looking to Threads and BlueSky because that is where the majority of normie non technical people are going to go. It will also give them a far bigger outreach of having their art seen and noticed by bigger groups of people.

But mastodon also suffers because the second biggest instance, pawoo.net l, leaves many people with a bad experience since they host rampant amounts of pedophilic content and fetishists galore and a lot of mastodon instances defederate from it because of it’s peoblems.

I left that instance when I got hit with some of that content, disturbing to say the least… I left for the much better packmates.org mastodon instance (hosted by our yiffit admin @Wander )

Pawoo was meant as a tie in to the Japanese art gallery site pixiv but even though it still has those tie ins, it’s been sold off multiple times. And the current owners will not do anything to curve the pedophilic content on it

Pawoo is one of the biggest black eyes for mastodon and probably hurts it when people are deciding to use mastodon, threads, or bluesky.

Alexmitter,
Alexmitter avatar

The thing is, most of them are looking to Threads and BlueSky because that is where the majority of normie non technical people are going to go.

I would agree when Mastodon would it not already make it so easy for normies to join.
If you can make a mail account, you can make a mastodon account.

But mastodon also suffers because the second biggest instance, pawoo.net l, leaves many people with a bad experience since they host rampant amounts of pedophilic content and fetishists galore and a lot of mastodon instances defederate from it because of it’s peoblems.

This is really a problem, not just because pawoo exists but some friends of mine really enjoy the japanese drawing community and they are actually all very active on pawoo, which is inaccessible from western mastodon. It leaves a double sour taste, not just because of the disgusting content they allow on there but also because people can not follow accounts they liked on twitter. But Pawoo won't stop, what they do is not illegal in Japan and the Japanese just do not care what westerners think. They do not care about being de-federated from the world.

But Pawoo should not effect the furry art community, or does it?

Mugox,
@Mugox@yiffit.net avatar

I would agree when Mastodon would it not already make it so easy for normies to join. If you can make a mail account, you can make a mastodon account.

It’s not entirely true. I mean, it’s easy to create account on any instance. It’s not easy to understand the concept of fediverse, be “discoverable” as an artist or sometimes even following someone on another instance. That’s why normies would pick something like threads or twitter, and the artists would have to choose the services that are more popular.

The question though, why won’t they use mastodon alongside other services. And to help them use mastodon, developers could create tools that would make it easier to post and read to/from multiple services at the same time, for example twitter + mastodon + threads. But it won’t be easy now to create such an app, because of twitter api costs, so probably won’t happen. Managing another service without big payoff might not be worth their while. Also, it’s what I assume would be the issue, so maybe I’m wrong, not an artist myself

Alexmitter,
Alexmitter avatar

And to help them use mastodon, developers could create tools that would make it easier to post and read to/from multiple services at the same time

I am not sure if that is actually the issue. Many artists already post on multiple commercial services and it was never seen as a problem.

crazy_pony,
@crazy_pony@rubber.social avatar

@Alexmitter @Wander @kitsuneofinari @Mugox

one thing that i heard several times from artists and makers is that they do not want to join Mastodon/Fediverse because "advertising" and "selling" here is prohibited, or they even tried and got rejected

Alexmitter,
Alexmitter avatar

I mean any art account of someone that takes commissions is basically advertising, and any chat with a user could be selling. Where is that prohibited?

crazy_pony,
@crazy_pony@rubber.social avatar

@Alexmitter @Wander @kitsuneofinari @Mugox
<i> am not sure, its what i got to hear several times when i tried to invite people on FA or FL to join Mastodon/Fediverse

Wander,
@Wander@yiffit.net avatar

If they had a better understanding of the platform they’d probably know that such rules depend on the instance you join.

Alexmitter,
Alexmitter avatar

I think that this is kind of a pattern. Different rules and de-federation between instances that confuses new users. But how could this pattern be broken.

crazy_pony,
@crazy_pony@rubber.social avatar

@Alexmitter @Wander @kitsuneofinari @Mugox seemingly random and unknown de-federation or at least muting between instances confuses still even the old users beeing here for more then 5 years

(currently i am in a situation where i dont know if some 2 persons on meow.social either deliberately ignore my contact attempts since a year, or if they technically never have seen my messages)

Mugox,
@Mugox@yiffit.net avatar

Offtopic: I’m on meow.social, if you want to test DMs you can try DMing me @crazy_pony. My profile: @Mugox

crazy_pony,
@crazy_pony@rubber.social avatar

@Wander today i would suggest for example https://mastodon.art/@Curator/110655120117161036

But back in 2022 things might have been too early and we lost the opportunity

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