Part of it seems to stem from people’s excitement to infodump about how federated social media works.

That’s relevant and interesting to learn about, but the average person just needs to hear “make and account here and start browsing memes” first.

Haha, I did. I still posted a few, but I was out of town with family for days and was barely on my phone.

Progress isn’t a straight line, and sometimes there are setbacks on the way. I’m disappointed, of course, but I’m optimistic that we’ll manage.

Yes, I’ve used this one before:

@remindme@mstdn.social

My guess is that as the need for housing has increased (population growth, short term rentals taking up supply, etc), we haven’t been building the right kind of homes to fill the void.

Nobody is out there using land to build “starter homes”. It’s either large, expensive houses or apartment complexes, so the demand for home ownership is high, but the ones available to buy aren’t cheap.

It would be like if nobody made affordable cars, so most drivers were stuck either leasing or saving up for a Lamborghini. (Hyperbole, but you get the idea)

I saw someone share a photo of this and assumed it was photoshop!

It’s a psychological consequence of polarization, which occurs when you have too many people in a social group agreeing with each other.

Groupthink elevates extreme opinions.

This is current problem in society that we don’t tolerate different opinion.

Exactly this. When online platforms become too homogeneous, any deviation from the typical opinions that are shared seems like a terrible, inexcusable offense that someone must do something about - thus, reinforcing the bubble.

We need to be able to disagree with each other and still get along.

Since most people are talking about the sign-up barriers, I’ll mention culture and reputation.

I love Lemmy and Mastodon, but whenever I’ve seen the fediverse brought up elsewhere, someone inevitably shuts down any curiosity by suggesting that it’s a political echo-chamber. I don’t think that’s accurate for all of it, but if that reputation is out there, we probably need to make an effort to show that there’s a broader appeal. If the average person is expecting the fediverse to be the left-wing equivalent of something like “Truth Social”, I could understand the reluctance to adopt it.

Why are there so many weird fraud stories like this out of China?

Reminded me of this fake waterfall story from earlier this year.

This is the way.

Social media will jump from one super important and stressful thing that we all need to lose sleep over to the next with or without us. Yes, these things might be important, but a lot of online activism seems to be about who can scare more people into supporting X, Y, or Z with zero regard for the reader’s mental health, the rhetoric used, or even being 100% factual.

It doesn’t hurt to disengage every so often.

I try to watch what I read online, and it truly helps.

Do:

• Keep yourself informed by reading bland articles about climate studies with direct interviews from the scientists conducting them.

• Stay knowledgeable about who to vote for to support reasonable climate policies.

Do NOT:

• Read articles that inject opinions from the web journalist, terrifyingly worded headlines designed to get you to click, or anything written for a secondary purpose (e.g. voter mobilization).

• Get your info 2nd, 3rd, or 4th hand from social media personalities on tiktok, youtube, twitter, or any website with an algorithm than rewards the most extreme takes with more engagement.

• Let fear prevent you from living the life you want to live or making long term plans.

This would probably escalate a lot of arguments that break out in comment sections.

It’s a total culture shock any time I check twitter. After browsing user-moderated spaces (like lemmy or reddit) for so long, I’ve gotten used to very rarely seeing anything more than a mildly conservative opinion. Seeing extreme right-wing stuff, outside of spammers trying to shock people, is almost non-existent.

Then you open twitter and get reminded what largely unmoderated internet looks like again.

There’s still good content mixed in with everything, but right wing outrage bait is absolutely winning the algorithm battle over there.

Am I getting my hopes up for nothing? =(

The pen?! Damn, that’s impressive.

The one I might use is a an old Galaxy Note. I wonder if I’ll have similar luck.

Whoa, I don’t know why I’ve never considered Linux on a tablet. I have a couple that are gathering dust in a closet, and if this is doable, it sounds like a fun project!

I don’t think that Threads or BlueSky really took off. I think the majority of people who haven’t outright deleted the app are still on Twitter.

Frame it with an engraving telling the story. That’s an awesome piece of history to have, but you would definitely need to display it in some way that immediately communicates “this is historical”.