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I read an article recently on Mastodon's explore tab:
The article is an interesting read, but I mainly want to respond to one particular thing very quickly:
One reason I've been enjoying Fedi is that it breaks down this monolithic, monocultural, "everyone sees the same super top ten sponsored megaposts" bull that corporate faux "social" media has broken down into.
I find this look at social media to be very supreficial, even if we've been severely burned by things like Facebook and TikTok. The reason is because it ignores (intentionally?) all of the progress that is happening in the Social Media space in both "corporations" and smaller companies and projects. I also think it falsely attributes social media tendencies to corporate culture, when in fact it's just human tendencies.
Many people at these companies and projects are aware of the large negatives of Social Media, and they have for a while - but knowing about them and fixing them are two completely different things. It is very easy to hate on social media without coming up with solutions. Mastodon doesn't fix anything, and introduces new problems not seen in other social media platforms. In fact, many of the trends of these "corporate" social media apps are used in all of the smaller social media sites. It's almost as if corporatism is not the problem in this instance, because if it were, then they would be the only ones having these problems... but they aren't.
Fortunately, Post.News and YouTube have started rolling out interesting, although not necessarily successful, solutions: to balance feeds between what is popular and what has little views. Post.News had this much earlier than YouTube, and perhaps it could create competition that will urge other social media sites to do something similar. This new way of weighing posts within feeds is something I have seen within the past 2 months on YouTube, where recommendations have been giving more videos that have very few views. It is extremely noticeable to anyone who pays even a little bit of attention.
Of course, sending out a ton of videos with little views isn't going to fix parasocial relationships or echo chambers, and could increase exposure to videos that *intentionally* don't have a lot of views because people found that video to be revolting in the first place. It creates more opportunity for people to get views, but this in turn promotes achievement culture and workaholicism: if you are more able to get views, you are more prompted to try to get views.
Lastly, smaller communities have just as many problems as larger communities, even if they have some benefits. You are better able to get to know one another, and this could create intimate relationships and understanding, or it could create situations of immense pressure and cult behavior. Small communities tend to separate themselves from the rest of society, to the benefit of the community, but many times to the detriment of social progress within that community, and particularly to the detriment of individuals within that community. Smaller communities tend to have less diversity and less exposure to diverse opinions and worldviews. In contrast, larger communities might have more diversity and more exposure to diverse opinions and worldviews, but it could also promote dehumanization, strife between factions and world-views, moral apathy, or even tribalism as individuals prioritize their families over society as a whole.
In terms of views and exposure, popular things might be popular for a reason, and so we must not make the implication that what is popular is bad, or that what is mainstream is bad. It is just as fallacious to assume that the minority opinions are always truth as it is to assume that the majority opinions are always truth. Recommendations are useful, they are also very bad, and it just depends on *the content* that gets recommended at a particular point in time, not on whether it's popular or not. Recommendations from people you trust could be a good way in getting trustworthy information, or it could be an echo-chamber. Recommendations have their place. They are a tool to be used carefully and mindfully.
P.S. I am also annoyed that Jordan Peterson is popular, although he's certainly not a majority opinion, but I haven't gotten even one recommendation of him on YT in many years, because I fine-tune my recommendations by clicking "Don't recommend this channel." I do this with revolting channels that I don't want to have to see. Regardless, I don't use recommendations to find content that I would want trustworthy information from, I use it to find videos for entertainment, which I believe is what recommendations are very good at doing, and is really what their primary purpose should be for.
P.S.S. I don't use Mastodon because I do not view it to be any better than any other social media platform. Mastodon doesn't get at the root of the problem, which is not corporatism, but human tendencies. In fact, I'm not sure if there even is a solution to make social media work.