[Air-L] Migration to Mastodon

Mon Nov 7 06:13:36 PST 2022

This thread of conversation is fascinating, but could I simply posit that it is being driven a bit too much by your (many of the participants in this discussion) feelings at the moment? Joining a social network is not an either/or decision. I have been signed on to Mastodon for a long time, but not a frequent user. But I have to be a part of many social networks to reach my friends and colleagues - each network has a somewhat different audience. 

And if you study social networking, or profess to be knowledgeable about Twitter and other networks, it is really nuts not to use a number of networks - unless you are not a social scientist of the internet and social media. Just somewhat baffled by the intensity of feelings being expressed. IMHO as an old user. 

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> On 7 Nov 2022, at 12:58, Michael Ruigrok via Air-L <air-l at listserv.aoir.org> wrote:
> 
> Be warned, these are the thoughts of a long-time Mastodon user,
> 
> Regarding Mastodon as an alternative, I think it would be a unique
> opportunity if the academic community were to become involved in the
> direction of the platform. As an open and community-driven technology,
> Mastodon can improve directly from the input of its community. Points like
> Emma's can have actual weight in shaping the possibilities of the platform,
> especially considering that the platform's end goals correspond closely
> with supporting vibrant, inclusive communities. I think it's critical that
> these possible issues and improvements are discussed, both within this
> community, and between us and the Mastodon community at large. Open-source
> projects like Mastodon do have limited resources, so individual wishes can
> be difficult to meet, and progress can be slow, but wider discussion and
> support does have impact.
> 
> This openness applies equally to shaping the platform to support
> opportunities for research. Given that the network of Mastodon is
> predominantly run by people dedicating their personal time and money to the
> mission of an ethical, open social technology, it's likely that they are
> more than happy to collaborate closely with our goals. While the
> decentralisation of Mastodon certainly presents a challenge for data
> collection, sharing the load of infrastructure may provide an environment
> where open data becomes a more sustainable, albeit smaller scale affair.
> 
> On a more idiosyncratic, but equally idealistic note, I'm fascinated at the
> possibility of leveraging the platform for more direct HCI research. Since
> Mastodon is part of a decentralised ecosystem, it would be possible to
> create a Mastodon server integrated with the existing social network,
> change one or a set of features, and get concrete metrics to how specific
> changes influence behaviour in a real-world, yet controlled environment.
> It's something I'd be interested in testing the feasibility of.
> 
> I do have some more specific thoughts on democratic discoverability on
> Mastodon, but I think I'll save them for that Mastodon thread. I'd also be
> keen to add anything relevant from these discussions on the Github feature
> request thread: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/14918.
> 
> Thank you for the compelling perspectives!
> 
> Michael
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Nov 7, 2022 at 8:17 PM Shulman, Stu via Air-L <
> air-l at listserv.aoir.org> wrote:
> 
>> Andrew,
>> 
>> I am solely responsible for the interpretation that firing the small
>> academic Twitter team (along with other service and content oriented teams)
>> is a precursor to ending the academic program. There is no reporting I have
>> seen to that effect. It was based on private conversations. I would be
>> pleased to be 100% wrong; the program has been amazing and I love working
>> with academics on the data. However, the program has specific compute costs
>> associated with it. Currently academics with credentials can pull undeleted
>> and unprotected Tweets from the complete history of Twitter for free. That
>> query and the data pull itself are not frictionless. Searching many
>> billions of Tweets and then retrieving the matches when there are 60+
>> fields of text and metadata and hundreds of millions of rows of data per
>> day, over more than a decade of Twitter online, is costly. I run one rack,
>> with one server, and one disk array, holding about one half billion Tweets,
>> and the electricity bill is a real cost of making our tools free for
>> academics. When Musk is done kicking people off Twitter for not labeling
>> their jokes as parody (so much for free speech leadership) he may look at
>> the cost of the free data access for academics, or anyone else, and choose
>> to curtail or monetize it. Will the Twitter Search API remain free and or
>> operational? Nobody knows. From what I have heard from folks still inside
>> and recently departed, some of the critical functions of the platform are
>> currently under- or unstaffed, not just the academic program. Certain key
>> people who are bearers of institutional knowledge about what keeps Twitter
>> servers running, insanely complicated and in parts aging tech, are now
>> focused on planning a group trip to Disney with the buyout cash, which, not
>> to go too far astray, appears to be one of the largest money laundering
>> operations in history. My point was if you have the academic credentials,
>> have not used them to the full extent, and you have a PhD thesis or
>> scholarly publication dependent on that access, the program is unstaffed,
>> the group in charge of Twitter is fretting about losing $4M US/day,
>> advertisers are bailing out, and we are entering what some political
>> science and history professors call a historically contingent moment with
>> potential for a major ideological realignment or worse. Democracy in the US
>> is under specific and well documented threats and some rightly say social
>> media is an enabling factor for authoritarianism and dystopian politics. If
>> we go into 6 weeks of civil unrest over election denial and another bigger
>> and better violent insurrection is organized on Twitter, does anyone think
>> Elon Musk will want academics or journalists fully empowered to document
>> the role of weaponized Twitter functionalities in that? I am an election
>> worker. People are making violent threats on Twitter about election
>> workers. The folks in charge of regulating that "free speech" are now gone
>> or have diminished resources. Public statements from the Trust & Safety
>> team aside, on Twitter, you can call for the assasination of political
>> leaders all over the world, the killing of vaccine advocates, mob violence
>> against election workers, blatantly false election denial, and some other
>> entirely anarchic, anti-Semitic, and racist stuff, and that was all before
>> Elon fired everyone who was responsible for keeping a lid on such things.
>> Twitter is a loaded weapon. There is no Board of Directors. Literally
>> anything could happen with no check or balance. I remain of the view that
>> Monday will be one of the strangest days in the history of the Internet.
>> Truly, I hope I am wrong about all of it.
>> 
>> Stu
>> 
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