[Air-L] Elon Musk & free speech

[Joseph Reagle]

I'd liken such positive experiences on Mastodon to the *intimate serendipity* people experienced in blogging in 2003 and on Twitter in 2006. The typical follow-on is *filtered sludge*. What's interesting to me about Mastodon's design is that they set out to address filtered-sludge from the start -- rather than ad hoc response driven by commercial interests.

I chuckled that I used the example of Trent Reznor -- an early Twitter enthusiast and then disappointed critic -- when I saw that he "officially" left Twitter two weeks ago.

https://readingthecomments.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/dtys4tyk#twitter-and-the-search-for-intimate-serendipity

     When I went to blogging get-togethers in 2003, it was with a dozen of
     like-minded enthusiasts: I met interesting people and we had good
     conversations. Over a decade later, going to a meeting for people who
     post comments to the Web seems passé. (Today almost any gathering could
     qualify as such a meeting.) After a network of people (online or
     otherwise) becomes popular, people want to bring their friends. At first,
     this is great. The value of a network increases significantly with each
     new node. A network of five phones permits ten connections; doubling the
     phones to ten permits forty-five possible connections. As Dunbar notes,
     however, at some point the scale of networks overwhelms the participants.
     First, we ask, “Who brought that guy to the party?” Second, the network
     becomes a target for those who wish to exploit it via spam and
     manipulation.


On 12/6/22 21:23, Paul Levinson via Air-L wrote:
> I've been on Mastodon about six weeks now, and I'm really enjoying it.  For
> me, it's akin to what I liked about Facebook and Twitter in their early
> years -- meeting people I hadn't been in touch with for years.