@evan my ideal microblog has no pictures, or at least hides them behind a click (profile pics, too). What I‘d like (to try out) more on the other hand is audio content.
@evan
> I think faces and pictures make a network feel warm and connected.
Completely agreed!
There's no lack of desire for connection and community and posting nice photos of ourselves to each other.
The trick is to do that without parasitic unaccountable entities feeding it all to their society-destroying machines, too.
Don't conflate "Do you want to post photos of yourself often?" with "Do you feel it is sensible and safe to do so, today, given the internet as it is now?"
@bignose right, but we are using a network we designed and control.
What the fuck have we done wrong if so many of us feel this uncomfortable sharing photos of ourselves with our friends, families, neighbors and colleagues?
If we can't do what we want here, what's even the point?
@evan The #Fediverse is a lot better than the platforms. Even, dare I say, safer in some ways.
> What the fuck have we done wrong if so many of us feel this uncomfortable sharing photos of ourselves with our friends, families, neighbors and colleagues?
We allowed corporations to rule a deregulated industry, gobble all their competition, and dictate everything serve an engagement-run, advertising-funded internet.
That needs to change, and fast. The Fediverse is good, but no match for that.
@evan@bignose Just because I post something on Mastodon doesn't mean it stays on Mastodon. People can save the image & do what they like with it: share it with their scary friends, photoshop it into a different context, put it on their weird stalker shrine, who knows? A print photo of me once got stolen from a physical bulletin board where I worked! Why? Plus people have body image issues & the internet is where you can be judged by your words, not your looks. My answer would be "almost never"
@evan I think most people generally don’t see a reason to post photos of themselves. Even on instagram, most users post extremely infrequently.
Microblogging platforms also have the disadvantage of most people’s mutuals not being irl friends. On instagram it might make sense to post a photo with friends because the majority of your followers will know your friends. On places where no one knows my friends (even me by my face), photos like that might seem too irrelevant to post.
@evan Super rarely and usually only in a "This is me next to the thing I am talking about" way or if its me and my guy. I do it slightly more on some other social media (insta, notably) but even though those posts get a lot more "engagement" it doesn't feel like the way I want to engage. Like I want to be looking at something else WITH people, not having them look at me (unless I'm looking super cute or something)
@evan
That was a photo someone else posted, and twitter blowhards got REALLY SNOOTY at people who didn't use their photos as avatars. I shouldn't have let myself get pressured into that.
One thing I've learned from the social media platforms is, that anything I don't want found and fed into an unaccountable corporation, I must not publish online.
At least, until we make muscular worldwide enforcement of regulations that effectively stop the rampant abuse of people's personal stuff.
@evan
I chose monthly or less but technically I never have. I probably will eventually though. I'm just faceblind (prosopagnosia), so pictures of people have never really mattered much to me, mine included.
The things people say are what I'm likely to remember and value more.
@evan even though I am an extremely handsome person (in the right light), I think it's kinda foolish to share personal information in social media. Or does the fediverse offer some kind of protection? Didn't think so.
@evan sorry, I don't see how the server provider has anything to do with it. The network is open by default. As we speak, a thousand spiders are crawling it, some of them doing creepy stuff.
@evan not referring to ActivityPub. Digital trails. Photos, locations referenced, biases, associations. I am a long time keener for transparency, openness, connected data, can't be pervasive soon enough. But the more open an individual is, the more they are exposed, and it's not safe for some people at least, and those people can be outed by reference.
@evan [MOL] About as often as I update my profile pic, and even then, for as long as I can remember, I like to filter it.
Not sure why, possibly shyness, possibly playful creativity. Maybe if "everyone" switched to doing this kind of filtering, I'd just start using the photos neat…
@evan Honestly I don't post much on the #fediverse But I intend to change that. Now that i have gotten more active on it, I am liking it more and more.
@ecpoir you don't see any reason for people to share photos of themselves with their friends, family, colleagues and neighbours? Or just not for you in particular?
I share my pics with my family and friends via email or other very individual and safe ways (Signal for instance), not with every unknown person who follows me in social media.
I don't do Insta / fb / WhatsApp / messenger for the same reason.
@ecpoir cool. I'm asking because I think it's important, and because I'm disappointed that we spent all this time building a network that we control, and people still don't feel safe posting selfies on it.
@evan Rarely if ever, avatar aside. Not that I'm against it, I do post the occasional pic of myself on photo related socials, and I really enjoy people here sharing snippets of their lives, especially since for a lot of folks sharing pics of themselves can be validating or a confidence boost.
But on a personal level, I like that this space is mostly reserved for pics of my pets and places I visit, my specific little interests, and words and thoughts that I want to put out there, and I kinda like the idea that anyone checking on me here is interested in that aspect of me, beyond what my face looks like. It's important to me to have that too.
@evan I never really post photos of myself on the fediverse. I'm more of an introvert, you know? I don't have a ton of friends in real life, and I've always valued my privacy. Plus, there's a bit of shyness thrown into the mix, so selfies aren't really my thing. 😊
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