“It’s the absolute lack of a way to game the system with engagement bait and reward rage-posting”
Fixed that for you.
It’s not a matter for average users, it’s a matter for the people who farm engagement and post 300 times per day. Having a space that isn’t dominated by accounts like that is a good thing. It’s why Threads is such a miserable place. The algo there is aggressive and heavily rewards this kind of shit. Accounts like that provide no value and create toxic spaces full of rage and misinformation just to keep the waters churning and keep a constant flow of vapid “content”. It’s gross, and we are so much the better if we lose a ton of them.
From a content creator’s standpoint, sure. The issue is that when the end user doesn’t have a shiny new thing they’re interested in in front of them every 30 or so seconds they just log off and stop using the service. Why use mastodon if bluesky/threads/whatever shows them, generally, more of what they want to see and less of what they don’t?
Most people are using social media as a way to veg out and unwind these days. They don’t really care if somebody is able to game the system, just that they see more that lets them veg out (or alternatively makes them angry, driving increased engagement).
I agree that this is generally bad, but trying to sidestep it completely like Mastodon is is just going to result in a network that never hits the critical mass necessary to start exponential growth.
“It’s the absolute lack of a way to game the system with engagement bait and reward rage-posting”
Fixed that for you.
It’s not a matter for average users, it’s a matter for the people who farm engagement and post 300 times per day. Having a space that isn’t dominated by accounts like that is a good thing. It’s why Threads is such a miserable place. The algo there is aggressive and heavily rewards this kind of shit. Accounts like that provide no value and create toxic spaces full of rage and misinformation just to keep the waters churning and keep a constant flow of vapid “content”. It’s gross, and we are so much the better if we lose a ton of them.
From a content creator’s standpoint, sure. The issue is that when the end user doesn’t have a shiny new thing they’re interested in in front of them every 30 or so seconds they just log off and stop using the service. Why use mastodon if bluesky/threads/whatever shows them, generally, more of what they want to see and less of what they don’t?
Most people are using social media as a way to veg out and unwind these days. They don’t really care if somebody is able to game the system, just that they see more that lets them veg out (or alternatively makes them angry, driving increased engagement).
I agree that this is generally bad, but trying to sidestep it completely like Mastodon is is just going to result in a network that never hits the critical mass necessary to start exponential growth.