Notices by Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@mastodon.social), page 7

Something I discovered as a community manager long, long ago: money kills motivation for everything else.

By the way, that's also true of sex too.

Right now, the biggest reason people are using Nostr is to talk their way into leftover crypto.

Daddy Jack dropped some BTC, and the bottom feeders are hoping to catch spare change.

Okay, fine.

Your favourite casino and strip joint have a really kicking menu. The sandwiches are utterly fantastic. You'll come back just for the cuisine.

I'll take your word for it.

But food also hits upon a primal desire. And since food can't be delivered over modems, that's a non-factor regarding online communities.

Unless, of course, you're talking about something like Yelp 😁

The other factor: if you know a certain place is known as a hub for money or sex, you're unlikely to visit that place if you want to do something else.

Nobody visits a casino for its fabulous knitting circle.

I'm not against getting paid or getting laid.

It's more like if people *know* that there's a place that they're likely to get paid or laid, that's all they'll be motivated by when they visit that place.

(This is what Elon got wrong about Blue Checks too. If people can buy a Blue Check, the Blue Check loses its value. Some stuff is valuable because you can't buy them.)

I have a point about Nostr!

The tech is interesting. But you can't build social media purely on tech -- you need a community.

But if the whole point of the community is to catch a few BTC, then Nostr is toast.

Yes, Nostr is just tech. It's agnostic. But that's also why, if it keeps going down this route, it will fail.

I don't necessarily want it to fail. Yet, if it's all about the money, what's the motivation to do anything else?

For the past bloody week, this ad for “Ukrainian ladies” keeps following me everywhere I go!

Yes, I’m blocking multiple trackers. I’m not using Google search or anything Google-related.

No, I haven’t visited any dodgy sites.

I’m not in the market for a mail order bride suffering from PTSD.

And I can’t get over that silly outfit and pose which says, “I’m a damsel in distress in a war-torn country!”

🚨 IMPORTANT 🚨

Be aware: mastodon.lol is shutting down.

If you're on that instance, migrate your account RIGHT NOW!

Daniel Motaung was paid $2.20/hour by Meta to watch beheadings and child abuse.

As a result, he suffers from diagnosed PTSD.

Now he's suing Meta for damaging his mental health.

Meta is outsourcing abuse and trauma to the Global South.

Just one more reason we all need to kick Big Social to the curb!

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64541944

Thinking about how TWO devices that I own are “obsolete"—not because the hardware has kicked the bucket—but because Google simply doesn’t want to provide security updates for them.

And now that I think about it, it’s all so wasteful.

Here’s a strange thought for you. I own a Sony Walkman that was made decades ago. It still plays NEW cassettes sold on Bandcamp. The device is probably ~30-years-old.

None of these Android phones will be usable in 30 years.

Twitter Co-Founder @biz just endorsed Mastodon!

In a Guardian interview, he said:

“I don’t know that Twitter as a company is going to succeed for ever but the idea of Twitter I think will be around [indicating Mastodon].

"It would only matter that Twitter the idea continued. And that’s happened. That seems to be happening already. Mastodon seems to be winning the open-source, decentralised version of Twitter. People seem to be going there."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/27/elon-musk-doesnt-seem-like-right-person-to-own-twitter-says-co-founder

Some people believe there's no purpose to "liking" something on Mastodon since it doesn't affect any algorithm.

Not the case.

It does something incredibly valuable: it acknowledges people.

Which is incredibly powerful, and is all the more important *because* it's not connected to gaming any algorithm.

By liking something on Mastodon, you are doing it honestly -- without any agenda at play other than that you like it.

So go ahead. Click that like button for its own sake.

According to Funkwhale, their most active instance is:

https://open.audio

It has 3K total accounts with 122 MAU.

What's more notable, however, is that it has 27,944 hours of music.

The Twitter outage had no effect on Mastodon sign-ups.

But it did result in a spike in Mastodon posts.

This implies many people are using Mastodon as a "back-up" Twitter.

Twitter outages are spiking.

Which is entirely expected.

Ever since Elon Musk fired everyone, we knew this would happen more often.

Source: https://downdetector.com/status/twitter/

Also see chart.

Many people who use Twitter might tolerate Fascism.

But will they tolerate the eventuality of Twitter being inaccessible for extended periods of time?

Like it or not, it should no longer be assumed that "volunteers" are running your instances.

The Mask Group, which now runs three large instances "has raised over US$50 million from private and institutional backers"—their words not mine.

There's going to be a massive land grab of all these big instances. There will be lots of merging and acquiring too.

My advice is that you all become *very* aware of who owns your instance and why.

Get to know your admins—make sure their values align with your own.

If you don't want to put your social media life in the hands of strangers, then self-host your own instance.

BIG NEWS: Pawoo.net, the world's 2nd biggest Mastodon instance, has just been acquired.

The entity acquiring them is the Mask Group, a business that also runs mstdn.jp and mastodon.cloud. They are also active in the so-called "Web 3.0" space.

If you haven't heard of pawoo.net, it's because many instances have de-federated from it.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mask-network-acquires-pawoo-net-070000858.html