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. William H. Dutton 55 Victoria Road Oxford OX2 7QF United Kingdom william.dutton@gmail.com Twitter @BiIIDutton (II=two capital ii’s) Phone: +44 (0)1865 423836 Mobile: +44 (0)7757 741670 Blog: https://billdutton.me
On 7 Nov 2022, at 12:58, Michael Ruigrok via Air-L <air-l@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@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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