Blogging and microblogging

[mjg59]

Long-term Linux users may remember that Alan Cox used to write an online diary. This was before the concept of a "Weblog" had really become a thing, and there certainly weren't any expectations around what one was used for - while now blogging tends to imply a reasonably long-form piece on a specific topic, Alan was just sitting there noting small life concerns or particular technical details in interesting problems he'd solved that day. For me, that was fascinating. I was trying to figure out how to get into kernel development, and was trying to read as much LKML as I could to figure out how kernel developers did stuff. But when you see discussion on LKML, you're frequently missing the early stages. If an LKML patch is a picture of an owl, I wanted to know how to draw the owl, and most of the conversations about starting in kernel development were very "Draw two circles. Now draw the rest of the owl". Alan's musings gave me insight into the thought processes involved in getting from "Here's the bug" to "Here's the patch" in ways that really wouldn't have worked in a more long-form medium.

For the past decade or so, as I moved away from just doing kernel development and focused more on security work instead, Twitter's filled a similar role for me. I've seen people just dumping their thought process as they work through a problem, helping me come up with effective models for solving similar problems. I've learned that the smartest people in the field will spend hours (if not days) working on an issue before realising that they misread something back at the beginning and that's helped me feel like I'm not unusually bad at any of this. It's helped me learn more about my peers, about my field, and about myself.

Twitter's now under new ownership that appears to think all the worst bits of Twitter were actually the good bits, so I've mostly bailed to the Fediverse instead. There's no intrinsic length limit on posts there - Mastodon defaults to 500 characters per post, but that's configurable per instance. But even at 500 characters, it means there's more room to provide thoughtful context than there is on Twitter, and what I've seen so far is more detailed conversation and higher levels of meaningful engagement. Which is great! Except it also seems to discourage some of the posting style that I found so valuable on Twitter - if your timeline is full of nuanced discourse, it feels kind of rude to just scream "THIS FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT IGNORES THE HIGH ADDRESS BIT ON EVERY OTHER WRITE" even though that's exactly the sort of content I'm there for.

And, yeah, not everything has to be for me. But I worry that as Twitter's relevance fades for the people I'm most interested in, we're replacing it with something that's not equivalent - something that doesn't encourage just dropping 50 characters or so of your current thought process into a space where it can be seen by thousands of people. And I think that's a shame.

Comments

Mastodon Feels Sterile.

[(Anonymous)]

It does seem like the nuanced discourse also discourages the useful shit posting I'd see from quite a few users over on twitter. A lot of the joking and casual behavior that occurred on Twitter just doesn't seem to happen on Mastodon. Maybe its just the communities I follow but I mostly follow the same people I did over on twitter and mastodon just feels sterile in comparison.

[(Anonymous)]

> If an LKML patch is a picture of an owl, I wanted to know how to draw the owl

I believe you are missing a “fucking” somewhere. :D

I'm a very prolific writer, which means Twitter never worked for me, and I find 500 characters as limiting as whatever the Twitter limit is nowadays.

Do you really think that prevents people from posting to-the-point items?

For me, the micro-blogging limits set by Twitter is what created the terribly toxic environment in the first place. No space to argument about anything, it's better to make a cynical joke and a good ol' insult to make your point.

— Pierre

Mastodon of all surveys

[hairyears]

I found a place in the Wandering Shop community - the art is beautiful! - but I'm still finding my feet: I need to invest some time in a better client and set up some lists.

... And that, I think, is the secret of getting the most out of Mastodon.

A feature, not a bug

[(Anonymous)]

I see this not as a shortcoming of Mastodon (the platform has other, more organizational, problems): The short outburst-style tweet culture on twitter was a big factor in it's use for radicalization. Sure, just venting about some technical issue was cute - but that cuteness was quickly gone the moment someone started venting in the same style about politics or culture - which then very quickly got misunderstood (sometimes willfully) because lack of nuance means lack of context - and ensuing flamewars.

You *can* say something meaningful in under 140 characters. But putting some thought into that is too hard for many users.

[reddragdiva]

I make a point of doing both. I have 5000 characters and I'm not wasting anything by usng 20.

I deeply and fervently suggest that you post like mjg59, and your readers will welcome your important insights, which absolutely include such as "THIS FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT IGNORES THE HIGH ADDRESS BIT ON EVERY OTHER WRITE" as a standalone post.

There's way too many content cops on Mastodon. I blame the marketing as the white suburbia of social media, and mastodon.social thinking it's the HOA for the Fediverse.

hmmmm!

[brainwane]

I appreciate your point of view on this and will attempt to do my part by sometimes being silly in the Fediverse.

[(Anonymous)]

There should really be more instances with low character counts. Would be great for people who prefer that style.

[(Anonymous)]

It seems to me that there should be different Activity Vocabulary object types for individual thoughts and reasoned discourse. This would allow for filtering and sorting and grouping such that a timeline would naturally say "person X had a series of thoughts recently" as one item in the UI, rather than scattering them through the arrival of edited texts. It could also specify that a Thought, unlike a Note, can't link to anything (and so can't be a reply), so you can scream, but you can't scream about anything or at anyone (in a way that links to the target), and if someone wants to respond or you want to explain, it has to be in a ~paragraph Note.

Give an opportunity to BlueSky: https://bsky.app/

[(Anonymous)]

Give an opportunity to BlueSky: https://bsky.app/

Centralized accessibility silos make not for

[(Anonymous)]

empowering the decentralized nature of aggregating expression.

But centralized is _so_ baked into _everyone's_ mindset even many of those who embrace the alternative(s) to the inert legacy of Big Data's Web2 still build the new tools in the shape of the old ones. If common sense could understand just how valuable each and all everyone's data really is, maybe the tools would approach the implementation free of the chains of centralization...

Really, it's not _that_ difficult to figure out how to do. Some like nostr even are on the future track already!